"Dear—the good sisters would give us shelter."
Jeanne shook her head. "If Father Rameau were but here. Father Gilbert is sharp and called me a heretic. Perhaps I am. I cannot count beads any more. And when they brought two finger bones of some one long dead to St. Anne's, and all knelt down and prayed to them, and Father Gilbert blessed them, and said a touch would cure any disease and help a dying soul through purgatory, I could not believe it. Why did it not cure little Marie Faus when her hip was broken, and the great running sore never stopped and she died? And he said it was a judgment against Marie's mother because she would not live with her drunken brute of a husband. No, I do not think Père Gilbert would take me in unless I recanted."
"Oh, come, come," cried Pani. "Poor Margot is most crazed. And I cannot leave you here alone."
They entered the adjoining cottage. There were but two rooms and overhead a great loft with a peaked roof where the children slept. Philippe lay on the floor, his face ghastly and contorted. There were some hemlock cushions under him, and his poor wife knelt chafing his hands.
"It is of no use," said the doctor. "Did some one summon the priest?"
"Immediately," returned Pani.
"And there is poor Antoine on the Badeau farm, knowing nothing of this," cried the weeping mother.
The baby wailed a sorrowful cry as if in sympathy. It had been a puny little thing. Three other small ones stood around with frightened faces.
Jeanne took up the baby and bore it out into the small garden, where she walked up and down and crooned to it so sweetly it soon fell asleep. The next younger child stole thither and caught her gown, keeping pace with tiny steps. How long the moments seemed! The hot sun beat down, but it was cool here under the tree. How many times in the stifling afternoons Philippe had brought his work out here! He had grown paler and thinner, but no one had seemed to think much of it. What a strange thing death was! What was the other world like—and purgatory? The mother of little Marie Faus was starving herself to pay for the salvation of her darling's soul.
"Oh, I should not like to die!" and Jeanne shuddered.