seriously the matter with me?" she asked. "My heart? My lungs?"
"We don't know yet," I evaded. "Very often, you know, symptoms which seem of no importance prove of the greatest importance; then, again, we often find that signs which seem serious at first mean nothing at all. That's it, just lie back, it will be over in a moment."
I placed the instrument, against her thin chest, and, as I listened to the accelerated beating of her healthy young heart, glanced quickly down along the line of her ribs beneath the low neckband of her nightrobe.
"Oh, oh, doctor, what is it?" the girl cried in alarm, for I had started back so violently that one of the ear-phones was shaken from my head. Around the young girl's body, over the ribs, was an ascending livid spiral, definitely marked, as though a heavy rope had been wound about her, then drawn taut.
"How did yon get that bruise?" I demanded, tucking my stethoscope into my pocket.
A quick flush mantled her neck and cliecks, but her eyes were honest, as she answered simply, "I don't know, doctor. It's something I can't explain. When we first came here to Broussac I was as well as could be; we'd only been here about three weeks when I began to feel all used up in the morning. I'd go to bed early and sleep late and spend most of the day lying around, but I never seemed to get enough rest. I began to notice these bruises about that time, too. First they were on my arm, about the wrist or above the elbow—several times all the way up. Lately they've been around my waist and body, sometimes on my shoulders, too, and every morning I feel tireder than the day before. Then—then"—she turned her face from me and tears welled in her eyes—"I don't, seem to be interested in th-things the way I used to be. Oh, doctor, I wish I were dead! I'm no earthly good, and—"
"Now, now," I soothed. "I know what you mean when you say you've lost interest in 'things'. There'll be plenty of interest when you get back to Oklahoma again, young lady."
"Oh, doctor, are we going back, really? I asked Mother if we mightn't yesterday and she said Dad had leased this place for a year and we'd have to stay until the lease expired. Do you mean she’s changed her mind?"
"M'm, well," I temporized, "perhaps you won't leave Broussac right away; but you remember that old saying about Mohammed and the mountain? Suppose we were to import a little bit of Oklahoma to France, what then?"
"No!" She shook her head vigorously and her eyes filled with tears again. "I don't want Ray to come here. This is an evil place, doctor. It makes people forget all they ever loved and cherished. If he came here he might forget me as—" the sentence dissolved in a fresh flood of
"Well, well," I comforted, "we'll see if we can't get Mother to listen to medical advice."
"Mother never listened to anybody's advice," she sobbed as I closed the door softly and hurried downstairs to tell de Grandin my discovery.
"CORDIEU!" de Grandin swore excitedly as I concluded my recitation. "A bruise? A bruise about her so white body, and before that on her arms? Non d'un nom! My friend, this plot, it acquires the thickness. What do you think?"
"M'm." I searched my memory for long-forgotten articles in the Medical Times. "I've read of these stigmata appearing on patients' bod-
