must be indefinitely postponed, and the cherry-tree would have finished blossoming before they could have regained their liberty. This dashing down of a newly-raised anticipation had in it something so abrupt and so unexpected, that Francine and Josèphe could by no means resign themselves to it. Desolate was the look that they exchanged, and silently did they begin to weep, as their mother took one of them in either hand, and sorrowfully remounted the path. Geneviève herself felt her heart oppressed; on reaching the platform, she could not but pause for a moment. The skiff with rose-coloured sail, that bore away the promise of another meeting and of a festival, had disappeared; the black long-boat was there at her feet--and with it had come to shore, seclusion, melancholy, and disease. Geneviève kissed her children; but scarcely could she keep back a tear that had gathered beneath her eyelids, as without the inclination to prolong her look she hastily entered the house.

Mathieu in the meantime had gone to receive the persons placed in quarantine, and to open the lazaretto for them. On returning, he looked somewhat pale, and his face wore an expression with which Geneviève was struck; but at the first question she asked him, he abruptly interrupted her, to inquire where Francine and Josèphe were. "Don't you see them?" she replied, pointing to the two little girls sitting down in a dark corner, still sobbing, and with eyes still moist; "did you think that they had gone with their cousin?" "Would to God, they had!" murmured Mathieu in an agonized voice, but not overheard by the children. Geneviève looked at him, stupefied. "Why so?" she asked; "what has happened? Tell me, Mathieu, in the name of the Holy Trinity! what is the matter?" "Well, then," answered the keeper, "there is ... there is ... death upon the island." "How do you mean?" "I mean, my poor wife, just what I have seen! The Thetis's long-boat has landed her hospital-mates and doctors, with eight sick men; not one of whom will ever touch the mainland again." "Holy Virgin! what is it?" "The yellow fever!"

For him who dwells inland, the yellow fever is but a disease similar to a thousand others, of which he knows nothing save the name. Family tradition and personal experience can attach to it, for him, neither terror or regret. But amongst our maritime population, the word sounds like a knell; not only bringing to mind a risk to be encountered, but reviving affliction, of recent or of ancient date. There, where every family has one at least of its loved members absent in foreign countries, the terrible scourge is all too well identified with the number of widows and orphans that it has made. 

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