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“It is about ten o’clock when the dam thing come. Piff! go a hot splash of air in my face, and then I know that it is all up with Gal Bargon. A month after it is no matter, for the grain is ripe then, but now, when it is green, it is sure death to it all. I turn sick in my stomich, and I turn round and see Norinne stan’ hin the door, all white, and she make her hand go as that, like she push back that hot wind.

“‘Where is Gal?’ she say. ‘I must go to him.’ ‘No,’ I say, ‘I will fetch him. You stay with Marie.’ Then I go ver’ quick for Gal, and I find him, his hands all shut like that! and he shake them at the sky, and he say not a word, but his face, it go wild, and his eyes spin round in his head. I put my hand on his arm and say: ‘Come home, Gal. Come home, and speak kind to Norinne and Marie.’

“I can see that hot wind lean down and twist the grain about–a dam devil thing from the Arzone desert down South. I take Gal back home, and we sit there all day, and all the nex’ day, and a leetla more, and when we have look enough, there is no grain on that hunder’ acre farm–only a dry-up prairie, all grey and limp. My skin is bake and rough, but when I look at Gal Bargon I know that his heart is dry like a bone, and, as Parpon say that back time, he have a wheel in his head. Norinne she is quiet, and she sit with her hand on his shoulder, and give him Marie to hold.

“But it is no good; it is all over. So I say: ‘Let us go back to Pontiac. What is the good for to be rich? Let us be poor and happy once more.’

“And Norinne she look glad, and get up and say: ‘Yes, let us go back.’ But all at once she sit down with Marie in her arms, and cry–bagosh, I never see a woman cry like that!

“So we start back for Pontiac with the horse and the ox and some pork and bread and molass’. But Gal Bargon never hold up his head, but go silent, silent, and he not sleep at night. One night he walk away on the prairie, and when he come back he have a great pain. So he lie down, and we sit by him, an’ he die. But once he whisper to me, and Norinne not hear: ‘You say you will marry him, Rachette?’ and I say, ‘I will.’

“‘C’est le bon Dieu!’ he say at the last, but he say it with a little laugh. I think he have a wheel in his head. But bimeby, yiste’day, Norinne and Marie and I come to Pontiac.”

The Little Chemist’s wife dried her eyes, and Medallion said in French: “Poor Norinne! Poor Norinne! And so, Rachette, you are going to marry Marie, by-and-bye?” There was a quizzical look in Medallion’s eyes.

Rachette threw up his chin a little. “I’m going to marry Norinne on New Year’s Day,” he said. “Bagosh, poor Norinne!” said Medallion, in a queer sort of tone. “It is the way of the world,” he added. “I’ll wait for Marie myself.”

It looks as if he meant to, for she has no better friend. He talks to her much of Gal Bargon; of which her mother is glad.