With one voice, in an indignant tone, the three men protested:  “Do harm?  Tiny pills no bigger than that!”

“My brother took nearly a box of them, and according to his account it was only good they did him.”

When Eutrope departed he left the box of pills; the sick woman had not yet agreed to try them, but her objections grew weaker with their urging.  In the middle of the night she took a couple, and two more in the morning, and as the hours passed they all waited in confidence of the virtue of the medicine to declare itself.  But toward midday they had to bow to the facts:  she was no easier and did not cease her moaning. by evening the box was empty, and at the falling of the night her groans were filling the household with anguished distress, all the keener as they had no medicine now in which to place their trust.

Maria was up several times in the night, aroused by her mother’s more piercing cries; she always found her lying motionless on her side, and this position seemed to increase the suffering and the stiffness, so that her groans were pitiful to hear.

“What ails you, mother?  Are you not feeling any better?”

“Ah God, how I suffer!  How I do suffer!  I cannot stir myself, not the least bit, and even so the pain is as bad as ever.  Give me some cold water, Maria; I have the most terrible thirst.”

Several times Maria gave her mother water, but at last she became afraid.  “Maybe it is not good for you to drink so much.  Try to bear the thirst for a little.”

“But I cannot bear it, I tell you-the thirst and the pain all through my body, and my head that bums like fire ...  My God!  It is certain that I am to die.”

A little before daylight they both fen asleep; but soon Maria was awakened by her father who laid his hand upon her shoulder and whispered:—­” I am going to harness the horse to go to Mistook for the doctor, and on the way through La Pipe I shall also speak to the cure.  It is heart-breaking to hear her moan Eke this.”

Her eyes open in the ghostly dawn, Maria gave ear to the sounds of his departure:  the banging of the stable door against the wall; the horse’s hoofs thudding on the wood of the alley; muffled commands to Charles Eugene:  “Hold up, there!  Back ...  Back up!  Whoa!” Then the tinkle of the sleigh-bells.  In the silence that followed, the sick woman groaned two or three times in her sleep; Maria watched the wan light stealing into the house and thought of her father’s journey, trying to reckon up the distances he must travel.

From their house to Honfleur, eight miles; from Honfleur to La Pipe, six.  There her father would speak with the cure, and then pursue his way to Mistook.  She corrected herself, and for the ancient Indian name that the people of the country use, gave it the official one bestowed in baptism by the church—­St. Coeur de Marie.  From La Pipe to St. Coeur de Marie, eight miles . .-Eight and six and then eight.  Growing confused, she said to herself—­” Anyway it is far, and the roads will be heavy.”