Finally, as if angry with himself, Gearheart shook himself and pushed open the door, letting the morning sun stream in. It lighted the bare little room and fell on the frozen face and rigid, half-open eyes of the dead woman with a strong, white glare. The thin face and worn, large-jointed hands lying outside the quilt told of the hardships which had been the lot of the sleeper. Her clothing was clean and finer than one would expect to see. Gearheart stood looking at her for a long time, the door still open, for he felt re-enforced in some way by the sun. If any one had come suddenly and closed the door on him and the white figure there, he would have cried out and struggled like a madman to escape, such was his unreasoning fear of the dead. At length, with a long breath, he backed out and closed the door. Going to the barn, he found a cow standing at an empty manger, and some hens and pigs frozen in the hay. Looking about for some boards to make a coffin, he came upon a long box in which a reaper had been packed, and this he proceeded to nail together firmly, and to line with pieces of an old stove-pipe at such places as he thought the mice would try to enter. When it was all prepared, he carried the box to the house and managed to lay it down beside the bed; but he could not bring himself to touch the body. He went out to see if some one were not coming. The sound of a human voice would have relieved him at once, and he could have gone on without hesitation. But there was no one in sight, and no one was likely to be; so he returned, and summoning all his resolution, took one of the quilts from the bed and placed it in the bottom of the box. Then he removed the pillow from beneath the head of the dead woman and placed that in the box. Then he paused, the cold moisture breaking out on his face. Like all young persons born far from war, and having no knowledge of death even in its quiet forms, he had the most powerful organic repugnance toward a corpse. He kept his eye on it as though it were a sleeping horror, likely at a sudden sound to rise and walk. More than this, there had always been something peculiarly sacred in the form of a woman, and in his calmer moments the dead mother appealed to him with irresistible power. At last, with a sort of moan through his set teeth, he approached the bed and threw the sheet over the figure, holding it as in a sling; then, by a mighty effort, he swung it stiffly off the bed into the box. He trembled so that he could hardly spread the remaining quilts over the dead face. The box was wide enough to receive the stiff, curved right arm, and he had nothing to do but to nail the cover on, which he did in feverish haste. Then he rose, grasped his tools, rushed outside, slammed the door, and set off in great speed across the snow, pushed on by an indescribable horror.