The stones and walls were moist, and now and then a drop,
slowly collecting, fell from the eaves to the ground. Doss, not liking the
change from the cabin's warmth, ran quickly to the kitchen doorstep; but
his mistress walked slowly past him, and took her way up the winding
footpath that ran beside the stone wall of the camps. When she came to the
end of the last camp, she threaded her way among the stones and bushes till
she reached the German's grave. Why she had come there she hardly knew;
she stood looking down. Suddenly she bent and put one hand on the face of
a wet stone.
"I shall never come to you again," she said.
Then she knelt on the ground, and leaned her face upon the stones.
"Dear old man, good old man, I am so tired!" she said (for we will come to
the dead to tell secrets we would never have told to the living). I am so
tired. There is light, there is warmth," she wailed; "why am I alone, so
hard, so cold? I am so weary of myself! It is eating my soul to its core-
-self, self, self! I cannot bear this life! I cannot breathe, I cannot
live! Will nothing free me from myself?" She pressed her cheek against
the wooden post. "I want to love! I want something great and pure to lift
me to itself! Dear old man, I cannot bear it any more! I am so cold, so
hard, so hard; will no one help me?"
The water gathered slowly on her shawl, and fell on to the wet stones; but
she lay there crying bitterly.
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