m back to Noireau."

"But the fever, monsieur? Can he pass a night there without taking it?"

"He is in the hands of his Creator," he answered; "we can know nothing
till I have seen him. We cannot call back the past."

"Ought I not to go with you?" I asked.

"Wherefore, my child?"

"He is my husband," I said, falteringly; "if he is ill, I will nurse
him."

"Good! my poor child," he replied, "leave all this affair to me; leave
even thy duty to me. I will take care there shall be no failure in it,
on thy part."

We were not many minutes over our frugal breakfast of bread-and-milk,
and then we set out together, for he gave me permission to go with him,
until we came within sight of the factory and the cottage. We walked
quickly and in foreboding silence. He told me, as soon as he saw the
place, that I might stay on the spot where he left me, till the
church-clock struck eight; and then, if he had not returned to me, I
must go back to the village, and send Jean with the _char a bancs_. I
sat down on the felled trunk of a tree, and watched him, in his old
threadbare cassock, and sunburnt hat, crossing the baked, cracked soil
of the court, till he reached the door, and turned round to lift his hat
to me with a kindly gesture of farewell. He fitted the key into the
lock, passed out of my sight; but I could not withdraw my eyes from the
deep, thatched eaves, and glossy _fleur-de-lis_ growing along the roof.

How interminable seemed his absence! I sat so still that the crickets
and grasshoppers in the tufted grass about me kept up their ceaseless
chirruping, and leaped about my feet, unaware that I could crush their
merry life out of them by a single movement. The birds in the dusky
branches overhead whistled their wild wood-notes, as gayly as if no one
were near their haunts. Now and then there came a pause, when the
silence deepened until I could hear the cones, in the fir-trees close at
hand, snapping open their polished scales, and setting free the winged
seeds, which fluttered softly down to the ground. The rustle of a
swiftly--gliding snake through the fallen leaves caught my ear, and I
saw the blunted head and glittering eyes lifted up to look at me for a
moment; but I did not stir. All my fear and feeling, my whole life, were
centred upon the fever-cottage yonder.

There was not the faintest line of smoke from the chimney, when we first
came in sight of it. Was it not quite possible that Pierre might have
been