ly empty, but
he started on his way.

It was December and a cold wind blew over the fields and whistled through
the bare branches of the trees; the clouds careered madly across the
black, threatening sky. The cripple dragged himself slowly along, raising
one crutch after the other with a painful effort, propping himself on the
one distorted leg which remained to him.

Now and then he sat down beside a ditch for a few moments' rest. Hunger
was gnawing his vitals, and in his confused, slow-working mind he had
only one idea-to eat-but how this was to be accomplished he did not know.
For three hours he continued his painful journey. Then at last the sight
of the trees of the village inspired him with new energy.

The first peasant he met, and of whom he asked alms, replied:

"So it's you again, is it, you old scamp? Shall I never be rid of you?"

And "Bell" went on his way. At every door he got nothing but hard words.
He made the round of the whole village, but received not a halfpenny for
his pains.

Then he visited the neighboring farms, toiling through the muddy land, so
exhausted that he could hardly raise his crutches from the ground. He met
with the same reception everywhere. It was one of those cold, bleak days,
when the heart is frozen and the temper irritable, and hands do not open
either to give money or food.

When he had visited all the houses he knew, "Bell" sank down in the
corner of a ditch running across Chiquet's farmyard. Letting his crutches
slip to the ground, he remained motionless, tortured by hunger, but
hardly intelligent enough to realize to the full his unutterable misery.

He awaited he knew not what, possessed with that vague hope which
persists in the human heart in spite of everything. He awaited in the
corner of the farmyard in the biting December wind, some mysterious aid
from Heaven or from men, without the least idea whence it was to arrive.
A number of black hens ran hither and thither, seeking their food in the
earth which supports all living things. Ever now and then they snapped up
in their beaks a grain of corn or a tiny insect; then they continued
their slow, sure search for nutriment.

"Bell" watched them at first without thinking of anything. Then a thought
occurred rather to his stomach than to his mind--the thought that
one of those fowls would be good to eat if it were cooked over a fire of
dead wood.

He did not reflect that he was going to commit a theft. He took up