her as she lie here all
day. I will carry her very tender--on the railway car--on the big boat.
The good Sainte Anne is everywhere, too. She will help."

"If faith can move mountains it ought to heal easily one poor, little
toddlekins," muttered Farr.

A new doctor came the next day, a breezy young man, a talkative and
frank young man, the assistant of the over-worked city physician, whose
municipal duties had obliged him to take on helpers.

"I shall ask him, hey--about the shrine?" whispered Etienne to Farr
while the doctor was examining the child.

"Yes; he'll be more patient with you than with me."

"And do you think that pretty soon she can go on the railway if I
be very careful, good docteur?" asked the old man, wistfully,
apologetically.

"Go where?"

"On the pilgrimage to the shrine of the good Sainte Anne in the Canada
country."

"Don't you realize what this case is?" demanded the young physician.

"He have not say--he hurry in, he hurry out."

"You the grandfather?"

"No!"

The doctor turned on Farr.

"Father?"

"No."

"Then I can talk right out to you two. This is a case of typhoid that
will be fatal in twenty-four hours. There's no use lying about it."

Old Etienne's mouth and eyes seemed to sink deep into his wrinkles, as
if Time had forced him suddenly to swallow an extra score of years. He
looked at Farr's blank and whitening face, and as quickly looked away.

"Break it to her grandmother," advised the doctor, nodding toward the
kitchen where the good woman was at work.

"But you don't know what you say," stammered the old man.

"It so happens that I do, my man. I've been handling too many of these
cases to be fooled. Why, I've got more than fifty cases of typhoid in
this city--just myself."

"But she has had sun and fresh air--on the canal bank where I tend the
rack."

"Sun and fresh air can't cure victims of the poison that is being pumped
through the water-mains of this city," snapped the doctor.

"Water-mains!"

The doctor turned and stared at Farr, for the husky croak of his
exclamation had not sounded human.

"That's what I said. You can't have lived very long in this state not to
know what we're up against on the water proposition."

"I haven't lived here long. But about the child--it can't--"

"Why, this Consolidated Company is owned by Colonel Dodd and his
politicians--and they own all the city and town water systems in this
state," said the doctor, no longer