“We must hope,” faltered the old man.

“Yes, mother,” echoed Henri, “we must hope.”

“Ay, my poor boy,” said Madeleine, “hope, hope!—­in God!” and she pointed upward.

This was the story of the poor family:  Francois Derblay was a peasant, born and brought up in Picardy, and the son of poor parents, who, at dying, had left him little to add to what Nature had given him—­a pair of strong arms and a sound, honest mind.  With this fortune Francois had begun early to till the fields, and by the age of twenty-five had laid by a little store sufficient to marry on.  His choice had been happy, and Madeleine, although poor and untaught, had been a good and loving wife to him.  By her thrift and his own hard work his little store quickly increased, and within a few years Derblay reached the goal to which all poor Frenchmen so ardently aspire—­the position of a landowner.  He had bought himself a few acres of ground, and their produce was sufficient not only to feed his family, but also to enable him to lay by each year a little sum wherewith to enlarge his property.  For some time, prosperous in all his undertakings, Francois was really happy, and at the age of forty could reasonably look forward to passing a quiet, comfortable old age; but, as so often occurs in life, at the very moment when the man deemed himself most secure in his ease, misfortunes began to rain upon him.  Dazzled by the accounts of some successful ventures made by neighbors, Derblay began to dream of doubling his capital by speculation, and accordingly invested the two or three thousand francs of his savings in shares which were to bring him fifteen per cent., but which ultimately left him without a sixpence.  To make matters worse, his land was bought by a railway company, and this sale, by placing in his hands a round sum of ready money, prompted him with the delusive hope of regaining his losses:  he speculated again, and this time as unhappily as the first, swamping all his funds in some worthless enterprise, which on the strength of its prospectus he had believed “safe as the Bank of France.”  To fill the cup of his sorrows to the brim, four of his five children were carried off by illness, the only one spared being Henri, the youngest.  At forty-eight, Francois and his wife, but five years younger than himself, were thus obliged to begin life again, poorer than at first, for they had no longer youth, as when they married.  They were not disheartened, however:  they had their boy to live for, and set to work so bravely that after ten years’ struggle they found themselves owners of the cottage and field I have described.  Still, they were not happy, for a painful anticipation was constantly dwelling on their minds and souring every moment of their existence.  Henri, their only boy, had reached his twentieth year, and the time had come when he must “draw for the conscription;” that is, stake upon the chances of a lottery-ticket the seven best years of his own life and all the happiness