a while yet. What would He be doing
with you? Heaven is all cluttered with old women, and down here we
have only the one, and she is able to make herself a bit useful,
every now and then ..." But he was beginning to feel anxious, and
took counsel with his daughter.

"I could put the horse in and go as far as La Pipe," he suggested.
"It may be that they have some medicine for this sickness at the
store; or I might talk things over with the cure, and he would tell
me what to do."

Before they had made up their minds night had fallen, and Tit'Be,
who had been at Eutrope Gagnon's helping him to saw his firewood,
came back bringing Eutrope along with him.

"Eutrope has a remedy," said he. They all gathered round Eutrope, who
took a little tin box from his pocket and opened it deliberately.

"This is what I have," he announced rather dubiously. "They are
little pills. When my brother was bad with his kidneys three years
ago he saw an advertisement in a paper about these pills, and it
said they were the proper thing, so he sent the money for a box, and
he declares it is a good medicine. Of course his trouble did not
leave him at once, but he says that this did him good. It comes from
the States ..."

Without word said they looked at the little gray pills rolling about
on the bottom of the box ... A remedy compounded by some man in a
distant land famed for his wisdom ... And they felt the awe of the
savage for his broth of herbs simmered on a night of the full moon
beneath the medicineman's incantations.

Maria asked doubtfully: "Is it certain that her trouble has only to
do with the kidneys?"

"I thought it was just that, from what Tit'Be told me."

A motion of Chapdelaine's hand eked out his words.--"She strained
herself lifting a bag of flour, as she says; and now she has pains
everywhere. How can we tell ..."

"The newspaper that spoke of this medicine," Eutrope Gagnon went on,
"put it that whenever a person falls sick and is in pain it is
always the kidneys; and for trouble in the kidneys these pills here
are first-rate. That is what the paper said, and my brother as
well."

"Even if they are not for this very sickness," said Tit'Be
deferentially, "they are a remedy all the same."

"She suffers, that is one thing certain; we cannot let her go on
like this."

They drew near the bed where the sick woman was moaning and
breathing heavily, attempting from time to time to make slight
movements which were foll