As he ceased, his wife rose, kissed his cheek and said, with a little break in her voice, “We have suffered much, Hormisdas; would to the Virgin we had not been so sorely afflicted.”

“Such affliction is nothing but cruelty,” he went on, scornfully.  “It was cruel when death took all our little ones in childhood.  But it was still more cruel, when we had grown old and were striving to be content and kiss the rod, for the Virgin to give us another daughter; to let us keep her till she had grown into womanhood; till we had given her an education which would have fitted her to be the superioress of a convent, and then strike her with a fatal illness just as she was about to take the veil, and once more ruthlessly crush out all our hopes.”

“So long as Adele lives there is hope,” said his wife, trying to be brave.

“Doctor Prenoveau says she will die,” he answered fiercely.

“She was resting easier when I came down to you.  I cannot get the idea out of my mind, that if we got Doctor Chalmers from Montreal, he would cure her.  They say, although he is young, he is very clever.  As for Doctor Prenoveau, you know people say he is too old to practise now.”

“When Doctor Prenoveau said the others would die, they died,” he replied, looking at her as though he feared she would no longer argue with him.

With a hopeful ring in her voice the brave mother said, “That is true, but this time he may be mistaken; Doctor Chalmers would know.”

“If we only dared hope,” he said under his breath.

“Doctor Chalmers would know,” she repeated eagerly.

“Send for him,” he replied, turning his face away.

The sun had hardly sunk behind the Laurentian range of mountains, which for hundreds of miles towers above the great St. Lawrence River, and dictates its course to the Gulf, when the wind from the north, bringing with it flurries of fine snow, began to blow cold and strong.  Doctor Chalmers drew the buffalo robes tighter about him, and settled back in a corner of the sleigh; he had three miles yet to drive before he reached farmer Frechette’s house.  “Had I known it was going to be this cold I would have arranged for some other doctor to take up the case,” he muttered.  Had he only done so, how different his life would have been!

“We were afraid you would not come to-day,” said Madame Frechette as she led him into the kitchen, where the stove was throwing out a genial heat.

“Had the message been less urgent, I should not have done so,” he replied, stooping and warming his benumbed hands.  Farmer Frechette sat facing the doctor at the opposite side of the stove, furtively glancing at the young physician, dissatisfaction imprinted on every line of his face; he was bitterly disappointed.  “He is little better than a boy,” the old man repeated to himself, over and over again.

“This is the doctor from Montreal, Adele,” said the mother, bending over her sick daughter.  Doctor Chalmers drew near the bed, and as the light from the coal-oil lamp fell across Adele’s face, he could not help but think how beautiful she was even in her illness.