Before she went upstairs to tell Cornelius, Christina flung on a coat and slipped out onto the porch to look at the brilliant stars and the dark outline of the mountain. Tears flowed down her cheeks and froze there. Then the absolute stillness touched her, and a strange sense of peace and—how to name it?—fulfillment flowed in. It is all so much greater than we are, she thought. And for this little time, this night, she wanted only that huge, impersonal sky. Tomorrow would be time enough to tell John, to do all the things that death brought in its wake—the human things. It was a strange moment—a moment of awareness beyond the personal.

“Warm my hands, darling, I’m cold,” she said to Cornelius when she was safe in bed beside him.

“Where have you been?”

“Out on the porch. Jane is gone.”

Cornelius held her two hands hard, so hard it hurt. She felt the shock in that hard clasp, the shock and then, as he let go a little, the wonderful warmth of life, the mystery of it. Like that they fell asleep, her last conscious thought how steady and strong Cornelius’s heartbeat sounded, and that on this small, indefatigable engine her own life was suspended.

On the day of the funeral it became clear that although Jane had no family—an only brother was too frail to come—the village had become her family, and the village mourned. Boys appeared from nowhere to shovel a path up to the church, no easy task because of the huge drifts against steps and door. Dinnock and Orin got the fire going. The women of the Ladies’ Aid swept the church and made a balsam wreath. Someone remembered that Jane’s favorite hymns had been “Rock of Ages” and “My Soul There Is a Country.” And Dr. Park was prepared to read the twenty-third and the hundred and twenty-first Psalms. Had there ever been a funeral among these hills without their being read?