Whitewash. Ethel Watts Mumford

snatched the cotton from the child's face and untied gag and bandages. The others crowded into the room, wet towels were brought, brandy applied, and windows opened wide. The atmosphere grew lighter. The countess stirred uneasily, and muttered.

      "The doctor—send for him at once!" called ​Victoria. "The child—quick, quick! don't stand there staring; don't you see that in her weak condition this may be fatal?"

      The garçon hurriedly blundered off, and while willing hands ministered to the other victims, Victoria worked with agonized suspense over the limp little body. The heavy, gasping breath, the persistent coma, and the pinched, waxen face, were terrifying. Would the doctor never come? The maid was regaining consciousness, and from the other room the incoherent ramblings of the countess announced returning life. But the child made no sound, only that horrible, rasping breath that rattled in her throat.

      Sonia came to the bedside and leaned over. "I wish I knew what to do," she murmured, "but we've done all we can. I have sent half a dozen of those jabbering idiots to fetch the police, so I suppose that some time in the next week they will start on that man's track."

      "Oh, why—oh, why didn't we give the alarm! We had him—caught—red-handed," Victoria moaned, as she bathed the unconscious face on the pillow. "The coolness of the villain," she ​went on, "to invent that plausible excuse on the spur of the moment, for we must have frightened him, but not out of his wits, unfortunately."

      "If he gets away I'll never forgive myself," Sonia hotly exclaimed.

      "Then you never will, for he has everything in his favor. The pilgrimage—it's the easiest thing in the world to get away with a change of clothes, or even without, for that matter, in this press of the visitors. To-morrow's jam will be bigger than ever. There are fifty trains a day to and from Auray. Every road is choked with vehicles. He'd be a fool if he were caught, and we know he isn't that. Oh, why isn't the doctor here?"

      "Madelaine, Madelaine!" the countess's voice screamed suddenly from the next room.

      "Thank Heaven!" Victoria muttered, "the mother's all right. Perhaps she knows what is best to be done. Go and see. Bring her in here as soon as you dare—yet, no—the shock, right after the chloroform—I don't know what to say. Oh, where is the doctor?"

      As if in answer to her prayer the sound of ​opening doors and the stir of voices announced an arrival.

      "Bring him here, Sonia," she begged. "The child is so weak, she needs him first."

      The hotel-keeper, talking excitedly and followed by a commissaire and a gendarme, pressed into the room.

      "This is the lady," indicating Sonia. "It was she who gave the alarm—"

      "The doctor—didn't the doctor come?" interrupted Victoria, beside herself with disappointment.

      "Not yet, mademoiselle—presently," the gendarme answered, kindly, as he advanced to the bedside. His face grew graver as he watched the child's labored breathing. "We must get on the rascal's track at once. Did you see him, too? I understand you and the other lady room together."

      Victoria prevaricated. "My friend recognized him when she saw him going down the fire-escape, but I can give you a good description of him, for I noticed him particularly during the day."

      She rapidly portrayed the stranger, while her hearer jotted hastily in a note-book. In the win​dow recess Sonia and the commissaire were engaged in animated conversation. Finally an exhaustive examination was made of the rooms, and the balcony by which the thief had entered and left. Nothing of any interest was found, but the maid, at last fully conscious, though laboring under great excitement, was able to give her testimony.

      "The countess, worn out by her journey, had thrown herself, fully dressed, on her bed; the child was dozing. She. the witness, was sitting at the table with her back to the window, when she became conscious of a peculiar odor. She turned her head, and was at once caught from behind, and a gag forced between her teeth. She struggled, but was instantly overpowered. A cloth saturated with something was tied over her nose and mouth, and she lost consciousness."

      "Had she seen her assailant?"

      "Not fully. She had the impression of a very heavy, thick-set man. She thought he had a black beard. His clothes were dark, of that she was sure. As he had attacked her from behind, she had not been able to see him clearly; but of ​his hands, which she had seen upon her shoulder and in fastening the gag, she had a definite recollection. They were coarse, hairy, and callous, the hands of a laborer, or, at least, one accustomed to manual work."

      "Would she recognize them if she saw them again?"

      "Certainly. She would never forget them—" and she became hysterical.

      The countess remembered nothing, having passed from her natural sleep into the anæsthetic with only a slight struggle. But from her the motive of the crime was learned. She had brought a large sum of money and a quantity of jewels, which it had been her intention to present to the miraculous statue, if, by St. Anne's intercession, her child were cured. It was evident the thief had some knowledge of this treasure, the police argued, from the fact that none of the more accessible rooms in the house had been disturbed.

      The countess gave her testimony through tears and entreaties, begging to be taken to her daughter. The arrival of the doctor interrupted the examination, and by his orders the unfortunate ​mother was at once admitted to the child's bedside. The effects of the anæsthetic had passed, but no recognition lit the feverish eyes. Even the mother's voice and touch failed in their mission. When at last the long closed lips parted, shriek after shriek of blind terror woke the silence of the room. The doctor intervened, and drugged the child to unconsciousness again.

      The room had been cleared of all strangers, except Sonia and Victoria, who remained in obedience to the supplication of the distracted woman. To Victoria's trembling inquiry the doctor shook his head.

      "It's only a matter of time. Meningitis—she would have died anyway, but the fright and the chloroform—it will not be long."

      "You must prepare her. She still hopes for a miracle," said Victoria, glancing at the kneeling figure of the black countess, who, prostrated at the foot of her daughter's bed, repeated prayer after prayer with agonized rapidity, clasping a worn rosary in her burning hands.

      The candles, guttering in their holders, threw gigantic deformed shadows on the bare walls, ​lighted up the tumbled bed, and drew sharp lines about the face of the dying child. Against the whiteness of sheets and pillows, the intensely black, shrunken figure of the bereaved woman seemed doubly sombre.

      The doctor, with his squat figure, oddly assorted garments, and heavy, weary face, seemed a creature of Balzac's pen turned flesh and blood. Victoria gazed on the scene, her nerves tingling.

      "I think," she whispered to him, "we, my friend and I, would better go. You can't let this blow strike her suddenly. I'm sure she'd go mad. If you should need us, send word; we'll come at once. But she would better be alone when she knows."

      The physician nodded, and Victoria, beckoning to Sonia, slipped from the room into the hall. The whole house seemed dimly astir, but they saw no one as they made their way to their room. They did not undress, but lay down on their cots without speaking, and gazed on the sickly dawn that made a pale square of the window. An hour—two hours; the stir of waking things grew in the outer air; crowing of cocks, singing of ​birds, vague hallos, the stamping and champing of stabled horses. The chimes rang four, then five, then six. The light of the newly risen sun was streaming pale yet brilliant on the old courtyard. Above the chimney-pots the white church spires gleamed against the hazy blue of the July morning. St. Anne's colossal statue, doubly gilded by its own precious leaf and the sun's contribution, gleamed and glittered. Through the opened window, a shaft of light boiled with tiny motes of gold.

      Sonia turned for the thousandth time on her narrow bed.

      "Are you asleep, Victoria?" she murmured.

      Her friend shifted her position, threw a rounded arm over her tumbled hair, and