d at him with despairing obstinacy. "I'll stay,"
said she.

"I tell you, go! Somebody is coming. I'll get help. I'll send for the
doctor. Go home!"

"No!"

"Oh, Madelon, if you have ever loved me, go home!"

Madelon turned away at that. "I'll be there when they come for me,"
said she, and went swiftly down the road and out of sight in the
converging distance of trees, with the snow muffling her footsteps.

When she reached home she groped her way into the living-room, which
was lighted only by the low, red gleam of the coals on the hearth.
Her father's gruff voice called out from the bedroom beyond: "That
you, Madelon?"

"Yes," said she, and lighted a candle at the coals.

"Have the boys come?"

"No."

Madelon went up the steep stairs to her chamber, but before she
opened her door her brother Louis's voice, broken with pain, besought
her to come into his room and bathe his sprained shoulder for him.
She went in, set the candle on the table, and rubbed in the
cider-brandy and wormwood without a word. Louis, in the midst of his
pain, kept looking up wonderingly at his sister's face. It looked as
if it were frozen. She did not seem to see him. Nothing about her
seemed alive but her gently moving hands.

Suddenly he gave a startled cry. "What's that? Have you cut your
hand, Madelon?" Madelon glanced at her hand, and there was a broad
red stain over the palm and three of her fingers.

"No," said she, and went on rubbing.

"But it looks like blood!" cried Louis, knitting his pale brows at
her.

Madelon made no reply.

"Madelon, what is that on your hand?"

"Blood."

"How came it there?"

"You'll know to-morrow." Madelon put the stopper in the cider-brandy
and wormwood bottle; then she covered up the wounded arm and went
out.

"Madelon, what is it? What is the matter? What ails you?" Louis
called after her.

"You'll know to-morrow," said she, and shut her chamber door, which
was nearly opposite Louis's. His youngest brother Richard occupied
the same room, having his little cot at the other side, under the
window. When he came in, an hour later, Louis turned to him eagerly.

"Has anything happened?" he demanded.

The boy's face, which was always so like his sister's, had the same
despair in it now. "Don't know of anything that's happened," he
returned, surlily.

"What ails Madelon?"

"I tell you I don't know." Richard would say no more. He blew out
his candle and tumbled into bed, turned hi