WHEN Zabelle saw him thus, she thought he was dead. All her love for him returned, and with no more thought of the miller or his wicked old mother, she seized the child from Madeleine, and began to kiss him, with sobs and cries. They sat down beside the river, and, laying him across their knees, they washed his wounds and stanched the blood with their handkerchiefs; but they had nothing with which to bring him to. Madeleine warmed his head against her bosom, and breathed on his face and into his mouth as people do with the drowned. This revived him, and as soon as he opened his eyes and saw what care they were taking of him, he kissed Madeleine and Zabelle, one after the other, so passionately that they were obliged to check him, fearing that he might faint again. "Come, come," said Zabelle, "we must go home. No, I can never, never leave that child; I see now, and I shall never think of it again. I shall keep your ten crowns, Madeleine, so I can pay my rent to-night if I am forced to do so. Do not tell about it; I shall go to-morrow to the lady in Presles, so that she may not inform against you, and she can say, in case of need, that she has not as yet given you the price of your spinning. In this way we shall gain time, and I shall try so hard that, even if I have to beg for it, I shall succeed in paying my debt to you, so that you need not suffer on my account. You cannot take this child to the mill; your husband would kill him. Leave him to me; I swear to you that I shall take as good care of him as before, and if we are tormented any further, we tan think of something else." It came to pass that the waif's return was effected without disturbance, and without exciting attention; for it happened that Mother Blanchet had just fallen ill of a stroke of apoplexy, without having had an opportunity of telling her son what she had exacted from Zabelle about the waif, and Master Blanchet sent in all haste for Zabelle to come and help in the household, while Madeleine and the servant were taking care of his mother. For three days everything was in confusion at the mill. Madeleine did not spare herself, and watched for three nights at the bedside of her husband's mother, who died in her arms. This blow allayed the miller's bad temper for some time. He had loved his mother as much as he was capable of loving, and his vanity was concerned in making as fine a funeral for her as his means allowed. He forgot his mistress for the required time, and with pretended generosity distributed his dead mother's clothes to the poor neighbors. Zabelle had her share of the alms, and the waif received a franc piece, because Blanchet remembered that once, when they were in urgent need of leeches for the sick woman, and everybody was running futilely hither and thither to look for them, the waif went off, without saying a word, to fish some out of a pool where he knew they were, and brought them back in less time than it took the others to start out for them.