He stared and stood still.
She went to the doorway and signed to him.
"Old Manon Dax is dead. Will you tell the people? The children are here, alone, and they starve."
"Manon Dax dead?" he echoed stupidly: he was her nearest neighbor; he had helped her fetch her washing-water sometimes from the well half a league away; when his wife had been down with fever and ague, the old woman had nursed her carefully and well through many a tedious month.
"Yes, I found her on the road, in the snow, last night. She had broken her leg, and she was dead before I got here. Go and send some one. The little children are all alone, and one of them is dead too."
It was so dark still, that he had not seen at first who it was that addressed him; but slowly, as he stared and stared, and drew nearer to her, he recognized the scarlet girdle, the brown limbs, the straight brow, the fathomless eyes. And he feared her, with a great fear rising there suddenly, before him, out of that still white world of dawn and shadow.
He dropped the handles of his cart and fled; a turn in the road, and the darkness of the morning, soon hid him from sight. She thought that he had gone to summon his people, and she went back and sat again by the sleeping children, and watched the sad still faces of the dead.
The peasant flew home as swiftly as his heavy shoes and the broken ice of the roads would allow.
His cabin was at some distance, at a place where, amidst the fields, a few huts, a stone crucifix, some barns and stacks, and a single wineshop made up a little village, celebrated in the district for its wide-spreading orchards and their excellence of fruits.
Even so early the little hamlet was awake; the shutters were opened; the people were astir; men were brushing the snow from their thresholds; women were going out to their field-work; behind the narrow lattices the sleepy-eyes and curly heads of children peered, while their fingers played with the fanciful incrustations of the frost.