e was as strong as a
horse, my woman."

Monsieur le Cure did not reply. He had taken down his flat black hat
from a peg and was carefully adjusting his square black cravat edged
with white beneath his chin, when Alice de Breville entered the doorway.

"How is his temperature?" she asked eagerly, unpinning a filmy green
veil and throwing aside a gray automobile coat.

Monsieur le Cure graciously uncovered his head. "There has been no
change since you left at midnight," he said gravely. "The fever is still
high, the pulse weaker. I am going for Doctor Thevenet after mass. There
is a train at eight."

Tranchard was now on his knees fanning a pile of fagots into a blaze,
the acrid smoke drifting back into the low-ceiled room.

"I will attend to it," said Alice, turning to the fisherman. "Tell my
chauffeur to wait at the church for Monsieur le Cure. The auto is at the
end of the lane."

For some minutes after the clatter of Tranchard's sabots had died away
in the lane, Alice de Breville and Monsieur le Cure stood in earnest
conversation beside the table.

"It may save the child's life," pleaded the priest. There was a ring of
insistence in his voice, a gleam in his eyes that made the woman beside
him tremble.

"You do not understand," she exclaimed, her breast heaving. "You do not
realize what you ask of me. I cannot."

"You must," he insisted. "He might not understand it coming from me. You
and he are old friends. You _must_, I tell you. Were he only here the
child would be happy, the fever would be broken. It must be broken and
quickly. Thevenet will tell you that when he comes."

Alice raised her hands to her temples.

"Will you?" he pleaded.

"Yes," she replied half audibly.

Monsieur le Cure gave a sigh of relief.

"God be with you!" said he.

He watched her as she wrote in haste the following telegram in pencil
upon the back of a crumpled envelope:

MONSIEUR TANRADE, Theatre des Folies Parisiennes, Paris.

Tranchard's child very ill. Come at once.

A. de Breville.

This she handed to the priest in silence. Monsieur le Cure tucked it
safely in the breast of his cassock. "God be with you!" he repeated and
turned out into the lane. He ran, for the cracked bell for mass had
ceased ringing.

The woman stood still by the table as if in a dream, then she staggered
to the door, closed it, and throwing herself on her knees by the bedside
of the sleeping boy, buried her