And the bell? There was something strange about it. Autumn passed and winter came, but no tidings of the bell. In the spring came a letter from England saying that the ship bringing the bell had foundered in the Gulf and her cargo was lost. Another bell would come by the next autumn perhaps. Poor Diâne! It seemed an answer to her unwitting prophecy. The snow disappeared and the birds and flowers came with a rush, as they always come to the Northland. When her work was done, Diâne would take her boy in her arms and wander away to the forests on the hillsides. She could seek sympathy nowhere else. The old familiar groves and hollows and peaks made her feel a strange calmness and resignation after stormy nights of despair and dying hope. Up here it seemed that her husband must be dead, or he would have come; down there by the river the torturing thought of desertion and lost love nearly drove her mad. Up here under the trees she told over and over again to her baby what his father had said when she walked here with him; what he would say if he ever came back; and if he did not come back they must know he was dead. Thus the summer passed and autumn came again. How she dreaded the winter with its long evenings and the snow-bound world, when there would be naught but the whistling wind, the driving snow, the faint murmur of the river under the ice, and her thoughts. * * * * * Then one sabbath Père Dufresne told them that the bell would be there in a week. How Diâne’s heart leaped with a vague, new hope! No one knew it was her bell, and that it was so near seemed proof that he was alive and had not forgotten her. At last it came. All the parish crowded around as it was being lifted from the cart. Diâne looked on from the outer edge of the circle, pale and disturbed, holding her baby so close that he whimpered with pain. Suddenly an exclamation of anger and disappointment burst from the people. A clumsy handler had let his burden slip and the bell had struck with a jarring ring--its last note. An ugly crack from bottom to top had silenced its voice before it could speak for St. Gregoire. Diâne sank to her knees with a sob. It was all over; her last faint hope was gone. Now she was certain he must be dead. No one noticed her, for all were listening to the curé who was reading aloud an inscription on the broken bell. “What? Whose gift? Read it again, father.” Diâne had paid no heed to the curé’s words, but the deep silence roused her to find them all regarding her with surprised awe. “My daughter,” said the curé as he came to her side, “the Blessed Virgin has sent her gift in your name; she has looked on her handmaiden with love and favor.” She arose bewildered and he led her to the bell, but she turned away calm and tearless. “No, no, father. It means he is dead and will not come. Let me go home.”