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“There is no pain, Angelique.”

He closed his eyes slowly; her lips framed an ave. “The mine,” he said, “the mine–until the spring.”

“Yes, Antoine, until the spring.”

“Have you candles–many candles, Angelique?”

“There are many, my husband.”

“The ground is as iron; one cannot dig, and the water under the ice is cruel–is it not so, Angelique?”

“No axe could break the ground, and the water is cruel,” she said.

“You will see my face until the winter is gone, my wife.”

She bowed her head, but smoothed his hand meanwhile, and her throat was quivering.

He partly slept–his body slept, though his mind was feeling its way to wonderful things. But near the morning his eyes opened wide, and he said: “Someone calls out of the dark, Angelique.”

And she, with her hand on her heart, replied: “It is the cry of a dog, Antoine.”

“But there are footsteps at the door, my wife.”

“Nay, Antoine; it is the snow beating upon the window.”

“There is the sound of wings close by–dost thou not hear them, Angelique?”

“Wings–wings,” she falteringly said: “it is the hot blast through the chimney; the night is cold, Antoine.”

“The night is very cold,” he said; and he trembled… “I hear, O my wife, I hear the voice of a little child… the voice is like thine, Angelique.”

And she, not knowing what to reply, said softly:

“There is hope in the voice of a child;” and the mother stirred within her; and in the moment he knew also that the Spirits would give her the child in safety, that she should not be alone in the long winter.

The sounds of the harsh night had ceased–the snapping of the leafless branches, the cracking of the earth, and the heaving of the rocks: the Spirits of the Frost had finished their work; and just as the grey forehead of dawn appeared beyond the cold hills, Antoine cried out gently: “Angelique… Ah, mon Capitaine… Jesu”… and then, no more.

Night after night Angelique lighted candles in the place where Antoine smiled on in his frozen silence; and masses were said for his soul–the masses Love murmurs for its dead. The earth could not receive him; its bosom was adamant; but no decay could touch him; and she dwelt alone with this, that was her husband, until one beautiful, bitter day, when, with no eye save God’s to see her, and no human comfort by her, she gave birth to a man-child. And yet that night she lighted the candles at the dead man’s head and feet, dragging herself thither in the cold; and in her heart she said that the smile on Antoine’s face was deeper than it had been before.

In the early spring, when the earth painfully breathed away the frost that choked it, with her child for mourner, and herself for sexton and priest, she buried Antoine with maimed rites: but hers were the prayers of the poor, and of the pure in heart; and she did not fret because, in the hour that her comrade was put away into the dark, the world was laughing at the thought of coming summer.

Before another sunrise, the owners of the island of St. Jean claimed what was theirs; and because that which had happened worked upon their hearts, they called the child St. Jean, and from that time forth they made him to enjoy the goodly fruits of the Rose Tree Mine.