ntinued moaning, "Oh, how I
suffer--how I suffer!"

Sister Hyacinthe grew restless with impatience. Ah, if she had only been
in the same compartment with him! And she resolved that she would change
her seat at the first station they should stop at. Only there would be no
stoppage for a long time. The position was becoming terrible, the more so
as the man's head again fell back.

"He is dying, he is dying!" repeated the frightened voice.

What was to be done, _mon Dieu_? The Sister was aware that one of the
Fathers of the Assumption, Father Massias, was in the train with the Holy
Oils, ready to administer extreme unction to the dying; for every year
some of the patients passed away during the journey. But she did not dare
to have recourse to the alarm signal. Moreover, in the _cantine_ van
where Sister Saint Francois officiated, there was a doctor with a little
medicine chest. If the sufferer should survive until they reached
Poitiers, where there would be half an hour's stoppage, all possible help
might be given to him.

But on the other hand he might suddenly expire. However, they ended by
becoming somewhat calmer. The man, though still unconscious, began to
breathe in a more regular manner, and seemed to fall asleep.

"To think of it, to die before getting there," murmured Marie with a
shudder, "to die in sight of the promised land!" And as her father sought
to reassure her she added: "I am suffering--I am suffering dreadfully
myself."

"Have confidence," said Pierre; "the Blessed Virgin is watching over
you."

She could no longer remain seated, and it became necessary to replace her
in a recumbent position in her narrow coffin. Her father and the priest
had to take every precaution in doing so, for the slightest hurt drew a
moan from her. And she lay there breathless, like one dead, her face
contracted by suffering, and surrounded by her regal fair hair. They had
now been rolling on, ever rolling on for nearly four hours. And if the
carriage was so greatly shaken, with an unbearable spreading tendency, it
was from its position at the rear part of the train. The coupling irons
shrieked, the wheels growled furiously; and as it was necessary to leave
the windows partially open, the dust came in, acrid and burning; but it
was especially the heat which grew terrible, a devouring, stormy heat
falling from a tawny sky which large hanging clouds had slowly covered.
The hot carriages, those rolling boxes where the pil