And he began to know that through all his despair
he had entertained a germ of hope, that grew apace, rained upon by
his brother's blood.
He strove on as best he might, wrung now by an access of hope, now
of despair, in agony to reach the end, however terrible, sick with
the aching of the toiled miles that deferred it.
And the light went lingering out of the sky, giving place to
uncertain stars.
He came to the finish.
Two bodies lay in a narrow place. Christian's was one, but the
other beyond not White Fell's. There where the footsteps ended lay
a great white wolf.
At the sight Sweyn's strength was blasted; body and soul he was
struck down grovelling.
The stars had grown sure and intense before he stirred from where
he had dropped prone. Very feebly he crawled to his dead brother,
and laid his hands upon him, and crouched so, afraid to look or
stir farther.
Cold, stiff, hours dead. Yet the dead body was his only shelter
and stay in that most dreadful hour. His soul, stripped bare of
all sceptic comfort, cowered, shivering, naked, abject; and the
living clung to the dead out of piteous need for grace from the
soul that had passed away.
He rose to his knees, lifting the body. Christian had fallen face
forward in the snow, with his arms flung up and wide, and so had
the frost made him rigid: strange, ghastly, unyielding to Sweyn's
lifting, so that he laid him down again and crouched above, with
his arms fast round him, and a low heart-wrung groan.
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