ave often done little services, attempted to impose upon me about the
wood for the winter's use, the very night before these occurrences. 'It
is enough,' I cried out, 'to bring the dead out of their graves.' I did
not know--the holy saints forgive me!--how near it was to the moment
when this should come true.

And perhaps it is well that I should admit without concealment that I am
not one of the women to whom it has been given to see those who came
back. There are moments when I will not deny I have asked myself why
those others should have been so privileged and never I. Not even in a
dream do I see those whom I have lost; yet I think that I too have loved
them as well as any have been loved. I have stood by their beds to the
last; I have closed their beloved eyes. _Mon Dieu! mon Dieu!_ have not I
drunk of that cup to the dregs? But never to me, never to me, has it
been permitted either to see or to hear. _Bien_! it has been so ordered.
Agnes, my daughter-in-law, is a good woman. I have not a word to say
against her; and if there are moments when my heart rebels, when I ask
myself why she should have her eyes opened and not I, the good God knows
that I do not complain against His will--it is in His hand to do as He
pleases. And if I receive no privileges, yet have I the privilege which
is best, which is, as M. le Cure justly observes, the highest of all--
that of doing my duty. In this I thank the good Lord our Seigneur that
my Martin has never needed to be ashamed of his mother.

I will also admit that when it was first made apparent to me--not by the
sounds of voices which the others heard, but by the use of my reason
which I humbly believe is also a gift of God--that the way in which I
could best serve both those of the city and my son Martin, who is over
them, was to lead the way with the children and all the helpless to La
Clairiere, thus relieving the watchers, there was for a time a great
struggle in my bosom. What were they all to me, that I should desert my
Martin, my only son, the child of my old age; he who is as his father,
as dear, and yet more dear, because he is his father's son? 'What! (I
said in my heart) abandon thee, my child? nay, rather abandon life and
every consolation; for what is life to me but thee?' But while my heart
swelled with this cry, suddenly it became apparent to me how many there
were holding up their hands helplessly to him, clinging to him so that
he could not move. To whom else c