She was very pale, and he tried but could not speak.
"Is it raining, Sandy dear?"
She asked this because as she put her hand out some drops fell down from his head upon her own.
"My pretty baby, my baby in the woods, what in the world is the matter?"
He leaned over her, and his voice trembled as he spoke. Then he went down on his knees, and his beard swept her face.
"Is it cold, Sandy dear? Do you think that we, that I, could cross the mountains to-day? If we went slow and careful, and climbed over the snow on our hands and knees, don't you think it could be done, Sandy?"
She kept on asking this question, and arguing it all the time, because the man kept looking at her in a wild, helpless way, and could not answer a word.
"If we went up the trail a little way at a time, and then rested there under the trees, and waited for the snow to melt, and then went on a little way each day, and so on, as fast as it melted off, up the mountain, don't you think it could be done, Sandy?"
The man was dumb. He kneeled there, grinding his great palms together, looking all the time, and looking at nothing.
There was a long silence then, and still Sandy kneeled by the bed. His eyes kept wandering about till they lighted on a striped gown that hung hard by on the wall. He fell to counting these stripes. He counted them up and down, and across, and then counted them backward, and was quite certain he had got it all wrong, and fell to counting it over again.