"Doctors do what they can," said he in a simple unaffected way, "but only God Himself has knowledge of disease.

Pray with all your heart, and I shall say a mass for her to-morrow--a high mass with music, you understand." All day long Maria strove to stay the hidden advances of the disorder with her prayers, and every time that she returned to the bedside it was with a half hope that a miracle had been wrought, that the sick woman would cease from her groaning, sleep for a few hours and awake restored to health.

It was not so to be; the moaning ceased not, but toward evening it died away to sighing, continual and profound--nature's protest against a burden too heavy to be borne, or the slow inroad of death-dealing poison.
About midnight came Eutrope Gagnon, bringing Tit'Sebe the bone-setter.

He was a little, thin, sad-faced man with very kind eyes.

As always when called to a sick-bed, he wore his clothes of ceremony, of dark wellworn cloth, which he bore with the awkwardness of the peasant in Sunday attire.