"Poor child, when did your mother die?" asked Donatus.
"Last night, in the forest."
"Why, then she is not buried?"
"I laid her in a hole where the storm had uprooted a tree, and I covered her with branches, and I rolled some stones down on her too, as many as I could; and a little wooden cross that she always wore--I stuck that in and prayed by it."
"What was your mother's name?" asked Donatus thoughtfully.
"Berntrudis, my lord, you know her well, for she was your nurse."
"Berntrudis," exclaimed Donatus sorrowfully; "was she your mother?"
"No, she was not really, but she brought me up and I called her so."
"Alas, poor woman, and was this your end--like the beasts of the field, on the wet earth, in storm and whirlwind, and now to lie unburied like them. Could not the Church even give you Christian burial, you who reared a son for her, and why, child, did you not fetch one of us this morning, so that we might have given her a grave in consecrated ground?"
"Whom then should I have fetched? I dared not go up to your people any more since the cruel man drove me away in the night. Ah! if you had only come to her you would certainly have made her well again, and she would not have died."