Wilder again attacked the tree with his axe,--another one lay dead there, and she must be found; and there was heavy and horrifying work ahead before the wind should cease and the snow begin to fall. At first the young man resumed his attack with the furious energy that had hitherto sustained his effort; but wisdom and caution came now to his aid. He realized his feebleness of mind, spirit, and body. He had devoted weeks of arduous work to the construction of his hut, and that had lent a certain strength to his muscles and buoyancy to his soul. Still, he was hardly more than a shadow of his old self, before his life had been wrecked a year ago, and he had come into the mountains to make a sturdy fight for self-mastery, for the regeneration of whatever shreds of manhood were left within him, and for their patching and binding into a fabric that should take its place in the ranks of men and work out a man’s destiny. He went about his task with greater deliberation. He forced himself to regard with calmness the distorted dead face upturned toward him. He worked with that slowness which makes greater haste in achievement. This brought a surer judgment and an economy of effort and time. He cut the branches one by one and dragged them away. Soon the woman’s form appeared. In the extreme moment of the catastrophe she had evidently sprung forward; this had brought her body, face downward, between the horses; they, in being crushed under the trunk of the tree, fallen across them, had nevertheless given her a certain protection; the trunk, in breaking the backs of the horses, had missed her head. As for the rest, she was so closely wedged between the horses that it would be difficult to extricate her. This, however, was finally accomplished after great labor. The woman’s face and clothing were blood-stained. So much worse did she look than the man, that Wilder had a new struggle with himself to command courage and strength for the task. He dragged her out to a clear place in the road, and made the same perfunctory examination as in the case of the man. While he was doing so the woman moved and gasped, and this unexpected indication of life was the greatest shock of the tragedy. But it was one of those shocks which bring new life and strength. Whereas, before he had been facing, without daring to contemplate, the awful duty that he owed the dead, here now was the most precious thing that the world then could have offered him,--here was Life, human life, fleeting, perhaps, but infinitely precious.