Page:Stories after Nature.pdf/69

Rh gentle to kneel when I shall mount it, but that it is allied to the best remembrance of my home; why should we not turn this gift to our use? Hew thyself a bow and arrows, and a spear; hunt thou the beasts for their skins; and with the feathers of birds, by the rareness of the art taught me in my infancy, I will weave mats and fans of devices above all common powers. We will from time to time load our camel with the labour of our hands, and take our tent to a far market, and thus live to love and bless one another." Her husband was astonished, but comforted, and did as she had said; and her singing and her converse made the way short and the labour sweet.

Thus led they for some months an enviable life; but one morning, when two months longer would have made her a mother, a fever seized her; at night she grew dumb, and on the morrow died. Her husband fell into an oblivion of despair, and was as a single weed in the garden of paradise, misery's heir. On the third day he buried her with his own hands. When the sharpness of his agony was somewhat past, he loved to linger about her favourite haunts, and bestowed all tenderness on the camel she had so dearly loved; and this patient creature, missing the gentle hand that had fostered it daily,