And closing her eyes, she, too, slept. And in that lone outlying fold, far away in the snowy bosom of the hills, there was the sleep of weariness, the sleep of sorrow, and the sleep of death. And who shall say that the last was not the kindliest and most welcome? III. THE SNOW CRADLE. As Mr. Penrose and Malachi o' th' Mount closed the door of Granny Houses on the sorrowing widowed mother, there opened to them a fairy realm of snow. Stepping out on its yielding carpet of crystals, they looked in silent wonder at the fair new world, where wide moors slept in peaceful purity, and distant hills lifted their white summits towards the deep cold blue of the clearing sky. Steely stars glittered and magnified their light through the lens of the eager, frosty air, and old landmarks were hidden, and roads familiar to the wayfarer no longer discovered their trend. Little hillocks had taken the form of mounds, and stretches of level waste were swept by ranges of drift and shoulders of obstructing snow. No sooner did Mr. Penrose look out on this new earth than a feeling of _lostness_ came on him, and, linking his arm in that of the old man, he said: 'Can you find the way, Malachi?' 'Wheer to, Mr. Penrose?' 'Why, to Rehoboth, of course. Where else did you think I wanted to go at this time of night?' 'Nay, that's what I wur wonderin' when yo' axed me if I knew th' way,' replied the old man. 'Oh! I beg your pardon; I thought perhaps the snow might throw you off the track.' 'Throw _me_ off th' track, an' on these moors and o'? Nowe, Mr. Penrose, I hevn't lived on 'em forty years for naught, I con tell yo'.' 'But when you cannot see your way, what then?' 'Then I walks by instink.' And by instinct the two men crossed the wastes of snow towards the Green Fold Clough, through which gorge lay the path that led to the village below. Just as they traversed the edge of the Red Moss, old Malachi broke the silence by saying: 'Well, Mr. Penrose, what do yo' think o' yon?' 'Think of what, Malachi?' asked the perplexed divine, for neither of them, for some moments, had spoken. 'Think o' yon lad as has getten killed, and o' his mother?' There are times when a man dares not utter his deepest feelings because of the commonplace character of the words through which they only can find expression. If Malachi had asked Mr. Penrose to write the character of God on a blackboard before a class of infants, he would not have been placed in a greater difficulty than that now involved by the question of Malachi. Already his mind was dark with the problem of suffering. Little Job's cry for 'the candle of the Almeety' had reached depths he knew not were hidden in his heart; while the look in the mother's face, as she stood snow-covered in the doorway of the farmstead, and as the firelight lent its glare to her blanched and pain-wrought face, continued ceaselessly to haunt him. And now Malachi wanted to know what he thought of it all! How could he tell him?