But it worn't fur to be. I'm goin' back to my
master and the old life, and you shall have the purse o' gold. I did
bitter, bitter wrong; but I'll do right now. So good-by, my darling
darlin' little Missie Cecile."
As the poor boy spoke he stooped down and kissed the burning hands,
and looked longingly at the strangely flushed and altered face; then
he went out into the forest. Any action was a relief to his oppressed
and overstrained heart, and he knew he had not a moment to lose in
trying to find a doctor for Cecile.
He went straight to the village and inquired if such a person dwelt
there.
"Yes," an old peasant woman told him; "certainly they had a doctor,
but he was out just now; he was with Mme. Chillon up at a farm a
mile away. There was no use in going to the doctor's house, but if
the boy would follow him there, to the said farm, he might catch him
before he went farther away, for there were to be festivities that
night, and their good doctor was always in requisition as the best
dancer in the place."
So Joe followed the doctor to the farm a mile away, and was so
fortunate as to find him just before he was about to ride off to the
fete mentioned by the old peasant.
Joe, owing to his long residence in England, could only speak broken
French, but his agitation, his great earnestness, what little French
he could muster, were so far eloquent as to induce the young doctor,
instead of postponing his visit to the hut in the forest until the
morning, to decide to give up his dance and go with the boy instead.
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