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perhaps, made a mistake, and it was possible that neither town nor
village existed in the direction in which he was travelling. Doubting,
he yet persevered.
Two or three times the little infant cried. Then he adopted in his gait
a rocking movement, and the child was soothed and silenced. She ended by
falling into a sound sleep. Shivering himself, he felt her warm. He
frequently tightened the folds of the jacket round the babe's neck, so
that the frost should not get in through any opening, and that no melted
snow should drop between the garment and the child.
The plain was unequal. In the declivities into which it sloped the snow,
driven by the wind into the dips of the ground, was so deep, in
comparison with a child so small, that it almost engulfed him, and he
had to struggle through it half buried. He walked on, working away the
snow with his knees.
Having cleared the ravine, he reached the high lands swept by the winds,
where the snow lay thin. Then he found the surface a sheet of ice. The
little girl's lukewarm breath, playing on his face, warmed it for a
moment, then lingered, and froze in his hair, stiffening it into
icicles.
He felt the approach of another danger. He could not afford to fall. He
knew that if he did so he should never rise again. He was overcome by
fatigue, and the weight of the darkness would, as with the dead woman,
have held him to the ground, and the ice glued him alive to the earth.
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