The night passed and the second morning came, and found us yet alive.

My wife lay now at my feet, her head pillowed upon the bundle she had brought from the minister's house.

Too weak for speech, waiting in pain and cold and terror for death to bring her warmth and life, the knightly spirit yet lived in her eyes, and she smiled when I bent over her with wine to moisten her lips.
At length she began to wander in her mind, and to speak of summer days and flowers.

A hand held my heart in a slowly tightening grip of iron, and the tears ran down the minister's cheeks.

The man who had darkened her young life, bringing her to this, looked at her with an ashen face.
As the day wore on, the gray of the sky paled to a dead man's hue and the wind lessened, but the waves were still mountain high.