sabots and crept easily toward it, smiling, and saying "_Coton-Maï_!"
to herself all the way. She put her eye to the hole. Anne Marie was
not in the bed, she who had not left her bed for two months! Jeanne
Marie looked through the dim light of the room until she found her.

Anne Marie, in her short petticoat and nightsack, with bare legs
and feet, was on her knees in the corner, pulling up a plank,
hiding--peasants know hiding when they see it--hiding her money
away--away--away from whom?--muttering to herself and shaking her old
grayhaired head. Hiding her money away from Jeanne Marie!

And this was why Jeanne Marie leaned her head against the side of the
house and wept. It seemed to her that she had never known her twin
sister at all.




A CRIPPLED HOPE


You must picture to yourself the quiet, dim-lighted room of a
convalescent; outside, the dreary, bleak days of winter in a sparsely
settled, distant country parish; inside, a slow, smoldering log-fire,
a curtained bed, the infant sleeping well enough, the mother wakeful,
restless, thought-driven, as a mother must be, unfortunately,
nowadays, particularly in that parish, where cotton worms and
overflows have acquired such a monopoly of one's future.

[Illustration: "THE QUIET, DIM-LIGHTED ROOM OF A CONVALESCENT."]