hear my prayers for them both! This was to have been their
wedding-day, and Marie is suffering so. She cannot sleep or eat, and
they say her sorrow may drive her mad, and that she will have to be
taken to the house of the imbecile. Poor, poor Ovide, that would
surely break his heart!"

Unable any longer to control her sorrow, she sprang to her feet, and
clasping both her arms around the statue, pleaded in a voice which
started a thousand answering echoes: "Mother of us all, hearken to me.
I know of the miracles thou hast wrought for those who have denied
themselves for thee, and made sacrifices and done penance. And I will
make sacrifices and do penance if thou wilt but restore Ovide to me
again and give health to Marie. I will go on a pilgrimage to the
Twelve Stations of the Cross, and pray at each of them; I will pray
every night for the souls in purgatory; I will go every day and
collect for the Little Sisters of the Poor. I--I--_Mon Dieu_, I will
do anything, anything, if thou wilt only answer my prayers."

Through utter exhaustion her arms slipped from the statue, at whose
feet she sank, sobbing like a child.

Of a sudden her tears ceased, and her face lighted up with hope--the
sermon that Father Benoit had preached about faith, the previous
Sabbath, had flashed across her mind. He had declared that to those
who had faith nothing was impossible; faith could cause even mountains
to be removed--Christ himself had declared so. It was only through
those who had great faith that the Virgin could perform mighty things.

Vividly she recalled how the priest had pointed to the crutches in the
glass case near the altar, and had told them that those who had left