She had scarcely turned the bend in the path, and was barely out of Ann’s view, when she had to lower her bundle and rest. Seated on a moss-grown stone near the dry bed of the stream which had fed Ann’s pool before the drought, she found herself taking the most morbid view of her condition. The delicate roots of the livid growth on her breast seemed to be insidiously burrowing more deeply towards her heart than ever before. Ah, what a fool she had been at such a crisis to listen to an idle tramp, who had not only given her a stone when she had paid for bread, but had revealed her secret to the one person she had wished to keep it from! But she essayed to convince herself that all hope was not gone, and the very warning Ann had angrily uttered might be turned to advantage. She would now be open about her trouble, since Ann knew it, anyway, and perhaps medical skill might help her, even yet, to triumph. Under that faint inspiration she shouldered her burden and crept slowly homeward. Reaching her cottage, she dropped the ball of clothes at the door and went into the sitting-room, where Virginia sat complacently sewing at a window on the shaded side of the house. The girl had only a few moments before washed her long, luxuriant hair, and it hung loose and beautiful in the warm air. She was merrily singing a song, and hardly looked at her mother as she paused near her. "Hush, for God’s sake, hush!" Jane groaned. "Don’t you see I’m unable to stand?" In sheer astonishment Virginia turned her head and noticed her mother’s pale, long-drawn face. "What is it, mother, are you sick?" By way of reply the old woman sank into one of the hide-bottomed chairs near the open doorway and groaned again. Quickly rising, and full of grave concern, the girl advanced to her. Standing over the bowed form, she looked out through the doorway and saw the bundle of clothes. "You don’t mean to tell me, mother, that you have carried that load all about looking for water to wash in!" she exclaimed, aghast. "Yes, I took them to the rock-pool and back; but that ain’t it," came from between Jane’s scrawny hands, which were now spread over her face. "I am strong enough bodily, still, but I met Ann Boyd down there. She had all the place there was, and had muddied up the water. Virginia, she knows about that spot on my breast that the medicine peddler said was a cancer. She wormed it out of him. He told her more than he did me. He told her it would soon drag me to the grave. It’s a great deal worse than it was before I began to rub his stuff on it. He’s a quack. I was a fool not to go to a regular doctor right at the start." "You think, then, that it really _is_ a cancer?" gasped the girl, and she turned pale. "Yes, I have no doubt of it now, from the way it looks and from the way that woman gloated over me. She declared she knew all about it, and that nothing on earth had made her so glad. I want to see Dr. Evans. I wish you’d run over to his house and have him come."