Page:Minnie's Bishop and Other Stories (1915).djvu/148

 wandered through the bog, so that a full hour passed before I reached Cuslough. It was a very gloomy house, standing low down near the lake-shore, and altogether surrounded and overshadowed by trees. I went up to it along a dark walk, soft under foot with fallen leaves, and grey, knee-deep with mist. I knocked, but there was no answer. I knocked again and again and waited, but no one came to me. At last I heard a child crying inside. The knowledge that trouble was on the Child of our Hope made me bold, so that I went round to the back of the house. I came to the yard; it was very dirty and untidy; and opposite me I saw some hens and chickens pecking oats which had been scattered on the ground for them. I turned and saw, standing in the kitchen doorway, the woman, the mother of the child. She had a gun. The barrel of it was resting on the back of a chair, and she seemed about to fire it off. It pointed towards the hens. I was astonished, and cried out to her. She answered me, speaking English correctly, but in the manner of a Frenchwoman.

"'I want to kill one of them, a chicken for the boy. The doctor said I was to give him chicken-soup and chicken-jelly. I am able to make the soup and jelly very well; but never, never have I killed a chicken. In my country one buys them dead in the shops. It is altogether horrible; but I must kill it. I thought of other ways; but I could not, no, I could not, do it. It seemed easier