“I am going to baptize the baby, if they will let me,” Edith said, when they entered the wood.
He only answered, “Yes!” He knew enough of Catholic doctrine to understand the importance which she attached to the ceremony.
The sun had gone down in a splendor of rose-color, and all the forest was steeped with it. The silver stems of the birches flickered like rubies, and all the streams and springs blushed as if they had newly been changed to wine for some great marriage feast. A brook ran toward them all the way beside their path, like a
breathless messenger bidding them hasten at every step. Then that airy flood of light ebbed down the west, and left a new moon stranded there, and stars sprinkled all through the blue. When they came out into the clearing, it was deep twilight. The cabin window shone out red through the dusk, and from the open door a lurid path of light stretched across the garden-plot and plunged into the woods opposite.
Like most people who live in the woods, the family kept early hours, but to-night none of them had gone to bed, nor were the beds prepared for them. The children were huddled together near the fireplace, whispering, and casting frightened glances to where their father and mother crouched on the floor beside the cradle, in which lay their dying babe. They had no lamps nor candles, but a pine-knot, fixed in the fireplace, sent a volume of inky smoke up chimney, and made a crimson illumination in the room. In that light every face shone like a torch.
The sick child lay in a stupor, sometimes holding its breath so long that the mother started and caught it up. Thus partially recalled, it breathed slowly again. There was no sound in the room but that low breathing, and the hissing of the flame in the chimney.
But presently there was a sound outside of steps coming nearer, and as they looked at the door Edith appeared on the threshold, all her whiteness of face, dress, and hands changed to pink in the light, as Charity might look hastening on her errand. Her eyes were wide-open and startled; her hair, which had fallen, caught in the low bough of a tree as they came, was drawn over her left shoulder, and twisted about her arm.
After the pause of an instant, she
came swiftly in, and knelt by the cradle, leaving Carl standing in the doorway.
“Thank God! I am in time,” she exclaimed. “I have come, you dear parents, to baptize this child, if you will permit me. You were not to blame for the others, because you did not know. But now you know. Consent quickly; for it is almost gone!”