there on the shining copper which hung
on the walls.

CHAPTER III

YOLLANDE'S TROUSSEAU

As for Germaine, she, with Petit-Jacques to help her, had gone to
milk the cows. Mother Etienne soon joined them, and the two women
came back to the house together.

Horror of horrors! What a terrible sight. Pale with fear they
stood on the threshold of the kitchen not daring to move--to
enter. Their hearts were in their mouths. A ghost stood there in
front of them--Yollande--and Germaine fell at Mother Etienne's
feet in utter consternation. Yollande? Yes, Yollande, but what a
Yollande! Heavens! Yollande plucked, literally plucked! Yollande
emerging from her shroud like Lazarus from his tomb! Yollande
risen from the dead! A cry of anguish burst from the heart of kind
Mother Etienne.

"Yollande, oh, Yollande!"

The Cochin-China replied by a long shudder.

This is what had happened.

On falling into the water, Yollande after struggling fiercely
succumbed to syncope, and her lungs ceasing to act she had ceased
to breathe, so the water had not entered her lungs. That is why
she was not drowned. Life was, so to speak, suspended. The syncope
lasted some time. The considerable heat to which she was subjected
when Germaine held her above the flaming newspaper had brought
about a healthy reaction and in the solitude of the kitchen she
had recovered consciousness.

After the first moment of terror was over, Germaine confessed her
plan to Mother Etienne, who, glad to find Yollande still alive,
forgave Germaine the disobedience which had saved her.

But the hen was still shivering, shaking in every limb, her skin
all goose-flesh. Dragging after her her travesty of a tail, she
jumped onto the kitchen-table which she shook with her shivering.

"We can't leave her like that any longer," said Mother Etienne,
"we must cover her up somehow," and straightway she wrapped her up
in all the cloths she could lay her hands on. Germaine prepared
some hot wine with sugar in it, and the two women fed her with it
in spoonfuls,--then they took a good drink of it themselves. All
three at once felt the better for it. Yollande spent the night in
these hastily-made swaddling clothes between two foot-warmers
which threw out a gentle and continuous heat and kept away the
catarrh with which the poor Cochin-China was threatened. The great
question which arose now was how they were to protect her from the
cold in future. Both of them cogitated