Darkness was everywhere in the world, yet she was about to plunge into a greater gloom. Who would be there, on that shadow way, to meet the broken spirit and bid it rest? Not the father, not even Muskwah. They were surely in the bright joyland, which must be eternally forbidden to her.
Perchance—how impossible a hope, yet how soothing—there might be another God of Whom she knew nothing. There might be a God so merciful as to care even for those who had not called upon Him during life, so compassionate as to pity one who had been deceived and betrayed. Ah, if there was such a God to receive her, to take her up in His arms, to breathe upon the dead heart and give it life again, how joyous would be the act of immortality!
She bowed her head, and moved slowly forward.
'It is time. Time for the great sleep; time for the peace. Only one little struggle, one quick gasp as the eternal change takes place, one stifling moment of agony, then I shall be as many are and all must be. For to this end must we come, and what lies beyond none may clearly tell.'
She crept down the steep bank. The child lay upon her back, stiff with cold, scarcely owning strength to cry. She swept through the willows and entered the canoe. The next instant she had cast off the clinging birch fibre. With one bold stroke of the paddle the light skiff darted toward mid-stream.
Another, then another, until the centre of the mighty river was reached. Here the waves sobbed round the paper-like keel, leaping aside in bars of burnished silver. The moon, reddened by the tints of the northern lights, poured forth a flood of radiance; the grim Spirit of the Waters uplifted pale arms and cried, 'Come.'
Swiftly the current pulled the canoe round towards the abyss; rapidly it floated down between the steep banks and gloomy line of forest waving on each side; down, until the white mass of foam became a snow mountain; down to the rugged rocks, where black jaws were dripping with flying spray; down, still down, towards the gate of Eternity.
She knelt, with paddle grasped firmly in both hands. Before her wailed the child. The baby lips found strength to release faint sounds. Again that tremulous cry beat upon the freezing air,—
'Mother! Oh, mother!'
Then she bent forward, to gaze earnestly upon the dark eyes, the small, round cheeks, the curling hair clustering over the little brow, the delicate shaping of the limbs. Soon she spoke again,—