As if he had heard, Charlie suddenly opened his eyes and looked smilingly first at one and then at the other of these two who had encompassed his short life about with such loving care.
"Listen," he whispered, "to the wind."
The wind had risen. It howled like some mad thing. It blew great blasts, ferocious blasts and deafening.
It was as if it, too, were hurt. It was as if it, too, suffered the agony of mortal pain in sympathy with the child.
Soon the child began to lisp and they bent their heads to listen.
"I am ... going ... out ... in ... the wind ... again," he said, "to find ... my ... mother."
"Charlie!" cried Seth, in a voice whose anguish sounded high above the winds. "Stay! It is we who love you, Cyclona and I. Stay with us!"
Cyclona knelt and laid her brown hand across the beautiful eyelids of the child for a little while.
Then she took Seth's head and pillowing it upon her bosom, rocked gently back and forth as they knelt alone on the hard cold earth of the dugout floor.
"It doesn't matter now," she whispered to him; "he knows."