Sure enough Pedro and Little Brother were able to slip quietly away
early in the afternoon; and although the walking was hard in the frosty
air, before nightfall they had trudged so far, hand in hand, that they
saw the lights of the big city just ahead of them. Indeed they were
about to enter one of the great gates in the wall that surrounded it,
when they saw something dark on the snow near their path, and stepped
aside to look at it.
It was a poor woman, who had fallen just outside the city, too sick and
tired to get in where she might have found shelter. The soft snow made
of a drift a sort of pillow for her, and she would soon be so sound
asleep, in the wintry air, that no one could ever waken her again. All
this Pedro saw in a moment and he knelt down beside her and tried to
rouse her, even tugging at her arm a little, as though he would have
tried to carry her away. He turned her face toward him, so that he
could rub some of the snow on it, and when he had looked at her
silently a moment he stood up again, and said:
"It's no use, Little Brother. You will have to go on alone."
"Alone?" cried Little Brother. "And you not see the Christmas festival?"
"No," said Pedro, and he could not keep back a bit of a choking sound
in his throat. "See this poor woman. Her face looks like the Madonna in
the chapel window, and she will freeze to death if nobody cares for
her.
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