She stretched her other hand toward the broken branch.
"That's right: reach me the stick!" he grinned.
She brought it round with such a swing that one of the bones of the sounder leg snapped.

He fell, choking with curses.

The lady laughed.
"Now you will have to wear splints always!" she said; "such dry bones never mend!" "You devil!" he cried.
"At your service, my lord! Shall I fetch you a couple of wheel-spokes?
Neat--but heavy, I fear!" He turned his bone-face aside, and did not answer, but lay and groaned.
I marvelled he had not gone to pieces when he fell.

The lady rose and walked away--not all ungracefully, I thought.
"What can come of it ?" I said to myself.

"These are too wretched for any world, and this cannot be hell, for the Little Ones are in it, and the sleepers too! What can it all mean?
Can things ever come right for skeletons ?" "There are words too big for you and me: ALL is one of them, and EVER is another," said a voice near me which I knew.
I looked about, but could not see the speaker.
"You are not in hell," it resumed.