in ignorance. It may be that she will
hear you, and cause a miracle to be worked, so that our nephew will be
restored to us again. I cannot bear to think of him having to stay
there for four long, long years."

"That would be too much to ask of the Virgin," answered the Little
Mother, in a voice as though she feared to pursue the thought, "but I
will pray to her that he be comforted, and that little Marie be
restored to health again." As she spoke Mother Soulard glanced in the
direction of the little bedroom where hours ago she, who that day was
to have been a bride, had retired to rest.

Poor Marie! On this woful night she had persisted in sleeping at their
house. Her parents had tried to soothe her, but she had grown so
violent that, stormy and all as it was, they could do nothing but
bring her to her lover's home. She was now in the little bedroom
which had been Ovide's since he was a boy, but which he had not slept
in for six months and would never sleep in again.

Delmia turned her dimmed eyes in the direction of the room and said
with a sigh of relief: "Marie seems to be sleeping well, sister!"

As they stole, hand in hand, past the bedroom toward the street door,
the Little Mother replied: "Sleep is the only thing that can save her
now. She has hardly slept at all since Ovide went away, and her reason
has nearly all gone with sorrowing for him. Everything depends upon
her sleeping to-night. Ah, such trouble! I must go and pray, sister.
If Ovide only knew how she suffers, it would kill him." Turning with
hand on the door she added earnestly, "If you hear the slightest noise
in the room, Delmia, go and soothe her, and tell her I won't be long."

"Had you not better open the door now, and look at her? She has been
asleep so long," answered Delmia, uneasily.

"No! no! Delmia; we might disturb her." The next moment the door
opened, a gust of cold air swept into the room and she was gone. If
she only had glanced into the room to see if Marie was sleeping!

The storm had grown more violent, and great clouds, ominous with rain,
were now overcasting the sky. Her sister could hardly have reached the
corner of the street, when Delmia thought she heard a slight noise in
the bedroom. She bent her head and listened attentively. "It is
nothing; my ears often deceive me now," she mumbled as she laboriously
seated herself on a maimed rocking-chair, which creaked dismally as
she rocked herself to and fro. Its querulous pro