Fortuné was sound asleep when his mother at last bent over him, one frosty December afternoon, her heart brimming with mingled thankfulness and tears. For indeed the face on the pillow, always lean, had passed far beyond mere leanness now. . . . Yet here he was, her son, whom she had mourned as slain, sleeping just as he used to sleep twenty years ago, a boy at Kerdronan, with one hand under his head--no, not just as he had used to sleep, for this was not of those days, this evidence, very marked in repose, of the pitiable victory that weakness had won over vigour. He was alive, would live, but he looked broken. And achingly it went to her heart, how thin his wrist was--all she could see, at the moment, of that once strong, sunburnt hand of his. Involuntarily she looked about for the other hand. . . . And it was then, and then only, that the full realisation of what the Bishop had told her came down upon her. Under that avalanche her fortitude gave way, and sinking down on the chair by the bedside she hid her face in her hands. The slight movement had wakened the sleeper, and he opened his eyes, and lay a few seconds looking at her, without stirring. He had known that she was coming. "What are you crying for, petite mère?" he said at last, in his changed voice. "Are you so sorry, then, to see me again?" "Oh, my son, my son!" she cried. * * * * * "You know about this?" he asked abruptly, after a little, indicating his left arm. Mme. de la Vireville nodded, unable, for all her courage, to trust herself to speak for a moment. "I shall have a hook," went on Fortuné, with a faint smile. "Like old Yves, the ferryman at Coatquen, when I was a boy. . . . Do you remember? He always said that he could do more with it than with a hand. . . . I used to envy him that hook. And I should never have had an elbow again, you know." Mme. de la Vireville swallowed something in her throat. "Since Monseigneur told me," she said, sufficiently firmly, "I have not ceased to thank God that it is your left arm." "I also," replied her son, with an effort. "And for Monseigneur's charity, and now, for your coming, my heart. . . . Sit close to the bed, and I shall sleep again." (3) Several times during the next two or three weeks did the Grand Vicar congratulate the Bishop on having sent for Mme. de la Vireville. There was no room for her in the little house, but she lodged near, and spent all her days at her son's bedside. That son no longer looked quite so much like the wreck of his former hardy self, and, but for the fact that his memory still played him obstinate tricks over names, he had regained his normal mental condition. But he seemed to his mother to have something on his mind. One day, half in jest, she taxed him with it. He looked at her from his pillows with a smile.