Once she moved a little. Her bearer paused and stopped and listened.
"Did you speak?" she whispered.
Manon Dax gave a soft troubled sigh.
"God is good," she muttered, like one speaking in a dream.
Folle-Farine held on her way; fiercely blown, blinded by the snow, pierced by the blasts of the hurricane, but sure of foot on the ice as a reindeer, and sure of eye in the dark as a night-hawk.
"Are you in pain?" she asked once of the burden she carried.
There was no answer. Old Manon seemed to sleep.
The distance of the road was nothing to her, fleet and firm of step, and inured to all hardships of the weather; yet short as it was, it cost her an hour to travel it, heavily weighted as she was, soaked with snow-water, blown back continually by the opposing winds, and forced to stagger and to pause by the fury of the storm.
At last she reached the hut.
The wind had driven open the door. The wailing cries of the children echoed sorrowfully on the stillness, answered by the bleating of sheep, cold and hungry in their distant folds. The snow had drifted in unchecked; all was quite dark.