owed by sharper outcries.

"Eutrope has brought you a cure, Laura."

"I have no faith in your cures," she groaned out. But yet she was
ready to look at the little gray pills ever running round in the tin
box as if they were alive.

"My brother took some of these three years ago when he had the
kidney trouble so badly that he was hardly able to work at all, and
he says that they cured him. It is a fine remedy, Madame
Chapdelaine, there is not a question of it!" His former doubts had
vanished in speech and he felt wholly confident. "This is going to
cure you, Madame Chapdelaine, as surely as the good God is above us.
It is a medicine of the very first class; my brother had it sent
expressly from the States. You may be sure that you would never find
a medicine like this in the store at La Pipe."

"It cannot make her worse?" Maria asked, some doubt lingering. "It
is not a poison, or anything of that sort?"

With one voice, in an indignant tone, the three men protested: "Do
harm? Tiny pills no bigger than that!"

"My brother took nearly a box of them, and according to his account
it was only good they did him."

When Eutrope departed he left the box of pills; the sick woman had
not yet agreed to try them, but her objections grew weaker with
their urging. In the middle of the night she took a couple, and two
more in the morning, and as the hours passed they all waited in
confidence of the virtue of the medicine to declare itself. But
toward midday they had to bow to the facts: she was no easier and
did not cease her moaning. By evening the box was empty, and at the
falling of the night her groans were filling the household with
anguished distress, all the keener as they had no medicine now in
which to place their trust.

Maria was up several times in the night, aroused by her mother's
more piercing cries; she always found her lying motionless on her
side, and this position seemed to increase the suffering and the
stiffness, so that her groans were pitiful to hear.

"What ails you, mother? Are you not feeling any better?"

"Ah God, how I suffer! How I do suffer! I cannot stir myself, not
the least bit, and even so the pain is as bad as ever. Give me some
cold water, Maria; I have the most terrible thirst."

Several times Maria gave her mother water, but at last she became
afraid. "Maybe it is not good for you to drink so much. Try to bear
the thirst for a little."

"But I cannot bear it, I tell you-the thirst a