he was true," said Lucille, with a
blush of interest.

"Ay, so they say; but Monsieur Le Prun, who was a jealous curmudgeon,
would not admit him; but he did allow the physician to see her (himself
standing by), because he was always glad to have the use of any body's
skill for nothing--which, more than any love he bore his poor wife, was
the reason of his letting him prescribe for her. Well, of course, she
could not send any message to her friends, nor tell how she was treated,
for old Le Prun was at her bedside; but the physician saw that she was
ill, and he said to the old miser--'Your wife can't walk, and she must
have air; let her drive every day in your coach.' 'I have no such
thing,' said old Le Prun. 'But you are rich,' said the physician, 'you
can afford to buy one; and it is your duty to do so for your wife, who
will die else.' 'Let her die, then, for me--the devil may send her a
coach to ride in, as they say he sent me my money; but I'll not waste my
gold on any such follies.' So the physician went away, disappointed and
disgusted, and her poor cousin was not able to effect any good on her
behalf; but it seems the words of Monsieur Le Prun did not fall quite to
the ground--they were heard in the quarter to where they were directed.
That evening closed in clouds, and before twelve o'clock at night, they
say, there came on such another thunder-storm as never was heard in the
neighborhood, before or since. Nothing but thunder, roaring and
crashing, peal upon peal, till the old house shook and trembled to its
very base; and the blue lightning glared at every window, and split
along the pavement in streams of livid fire; and all this time the rain
was beating straight down in an incessant and furious deluge."

"And so, I suppose, the devil came in the midst of the tempest, and took
him away bodily in a flash of lightning?"

"No, no, my pretty bird, not so fast. There was an old negro servant of
his, a fellow just as wicked as himself, who was sitting in the kitchen,
cursing the rain that was battering in huge drops down the chimney, and
putting out the wood at which he was warming his shins, when, in the
midst of the dreadful hubbub of the tempest, what should he hear but the
rush of a great equipage, and wheels and horses clattering over the
pavement, amidst the shouts of men and the sound of horns. Up jumped the
black, and, listening, he heard a loud voice shouting through the storm,
as if to summon some one t