sed and fed the horse. He
and his children sat at a little distance while the doctor was going
through his programme.

Every one of them was thinking:--"Presently we shall know what is
the matter, and the doctor will give her the right medicines." But
when the examination was ended, instead of turning to the bottles in
his bag, he seemed uncertain and began to ask interminable
questions. How had it happened, and where, particularly, did she
feel pain ... Had she ever before suffered from the same trouble ...
The answers did not seem to enlighten him very much; then he
turned to the sick woman herself, only to receive confused
statements and complaints.

"If it is just a wrench that she has given herself," at length he
announced, "she will get well without any meddling; there is nothing
for her to do but to stay quietly in bed. But if there is some
injury within, to the kidneys or another organ, it may be a grave
affair." He was conscious that his state of doubt was disappointing
to the Chapdelaines, and was anxious to restore his medical
reputation.

"Internal lesions are serious things, and often one cannot detect
them. The wisest man in the world could tell you no more than I. We
shall have to wait ... But perhaps it is not that we have to deal
with." After some further investigation he shook his head. "Of
course I can give something that will keep her from suffering like
this."

The leather bag now disclosed its wonderworking phials; fifteen
drops of a yellowish drug were diluted with two fingers of water,
and the sick woman, lifted up in bed, managed to swallow this with
sharp cries of pain. Then there was apparently nothing more to be
done; the men fit their pipes, and the doctor, with his feet against
the stove, held forth as to his professional labours and the cures
he had wrought.

"Illnesses like these," said he, "where one cannot discover
precisely what is the matter, are more baffling to a doctor than the
gravest disorders--like pneumonia now, or even typhoid fever which
carry off three-quarters of the people hereabouts who do not die of
old age. Well, typhoid and pneumonia, I cure these every month in
the year. You know Viateur Tremblay, the postmaster at St. Henri ..."

He seemed a little hurt that Madame Chapdelaine should be the victim
of an obscure malady, hard to diagnose, and had not been taken down
with one of the two complaints he was accustomed to treat with such
success, and he gave an ac