f disease in
the person, of one dear to them.

Tardif occupied himself with mending his nets, pausing frequently with
his solemn eyes fixed upon the door of the girl's room, very much as a
patient mastiff watches the spot where he knows his master is near to
him, though out of sight. His mother went about her household work
ploddingly, and Mother Renouf kept manfully to her post, in turn with
me, as sentinel over the sickbed. There the young girl lay whispering
from morning till night, and from night till morning again--always
whispering. The fever gained ground from hour to hour. I had no data by
which to calculate her chances of getting through it; but my hopes were
very low at times.

On the Tuesday afternoon, in a temporary lull of the hail and wind, I
started off on a walk across the island. The wind was still blowing from
the southwest, and filling all the narrow sea between us and Guernsey
with boiling surge. Very angry looked the masses of foam whirling about
the sunken reefs, and very ominous the low-lying, hard blocks of clouds
all along the horizon. I strolled as far as the Coupee, that giddy
pathway between Great and Little Sark, where one can see the seething of
the waves at the feet of the cliffs on both sides, three hundred feet
below one. Something like a panic seized me. My nerves were too far
unstrung for me to venture across the long, narrow isthmus. I turned
abruptly again, and hurried as fast as my legs would carry me back to
Tardif's cottage.

I had been away less than an hour, but an advantage had been taken of my
absence. I found Tardif seated at the table, with a tangle of silky,
shining hair lying before him. A tear or two had fallen upon it from his
eyes. I understood at a glance what it meant. Mother Renouf had cut off
my patient's pretty curls as soon as I was out of the house. I could not
be angry with her, though I did not suppose it would do much good, and I
felt a sort of resentment, such as a mother would feel, at this
sacrifice of a natural beauty. They were all disordered and ravelled.
Tardif's great hand caressed them tenderly, and I drew out one long,
glossy tress and wound it about my fingers, with a heavy heart.

"It is like the pretty feathers of a bird that has been wounded," said
Tardif, sorrowfully.

Just then there came a knock at the door and a sharp click of the latch,
loud enough to penetrate Dame Tardif's deaf ears, or to arouse our
patient, if she had been sleeping