Through obscure complicated mental processes, of which she had only the dimmest perceptions, _Jules_ had always given the powders ... how strange it was that precisely a bedridden woman who had most need of them should have owned no sheets ... there came to her a great desire to send that old woman the medicine she needed. "You go outside and spin your top for a while," she said to the child; "I'll call you when I'm ready." She went upstairs. Holding her skirts high to keep them out of the filth, she picked her way to the bookcase. Books were scattered all about the room, torn, cut, trampled on, defiled; but for the most part those with handsome bindings had been chosen for destruction. On the top shelf, sober in their drab, gray-linen binding, stood Jules' big record-books, intact. She carried down an armful of them to the pharmacy, and opened the latest one, the one which Jules had put away with his own hand the day he had left her. The sight of the pages covered with Jules' neat, clear handwriting brought a rush of scalding tears to her eyes. Her bosom heaved in the beginning of sobs. She laid down the book, and, taking hold of the counter with all her strength, she forced herself to draw one long, regular breath after another, holding her head high. When her heart was beating quietly again, quietly and heavily, in her breast, she opened the book and began studying the pages. Jules set everything down in writing, it being his idea that a pharmacist had no other defense against making those occasional mistakes inevitable to human nature, but which must not occur in his profession. Madeleine read: "March 10, sold 100 quinine pills to M. Augier. Stock low. Made 100 more, using quinine from the Cochard Company's laboratories. Filled prescription...." Madeleine's eyes leaped over the hieroglyphics of the pharmaceutical terms and ran up and down the pages, filled with such items, looking for the name Duguet. She had almost given up when she saw, dated July 30, 1914, the entry: "Made up fresh supply Mme. Duguet asthma powders, prescription 457. Dr. Millier. Drawer No. 17." Madeleine ran behind the counter and pulled out No. 17. She found there a little pasteboard box marked, "Duguet." "Oh, boy, little boy!" she called. When the child came in she asked, "Did your grandmother ever get any other medicine here?" "No," said the grandson of the bedridden woman, "she hasn't got anything else the matter with her." "Well," said the pharmacist's wife, "here is her medicine." She put the box in his hand. "Oh, we never get more than four at a time," he told her. "She never has the money to pay for more. Here it is. Granny hid it in her hair so the Germans wouldn't get it. She hid all we have. She's got more than _five francs_, all safe." He put a small silver coin in her hand and departed.