where he sometimes
remained for four or five days at a time, provided he had collected a
sufficient store of food beforehand.

He lived like the beasts of the field. He was in the midst of men, yet
knew no one, loved no one, exciting in the breasts of the peasants only
a sort of careless contempt and smoldering hostility. They nicknamed
him "Bell," because he hung between his two crutches like a church bell
between its supports.

For two days he had eaten nothing. No one gave him anything now. Every
one's patience was exhausted. Women shouted to him from their doorsteps
when they saw him coming:

"Be off with you, you good-for-nothing vagabond! Why, I gave you a piece
of bread only three days ago!"

And he turned on his crutches to the next house, where he was received
in the same fashion.

The women declared to one another as they stood at their doors:

"We can't feed that lazy brute all the year round!"

And yet the "lazy brute" needed food every day.

He had exhausted Saint-Hilaire, Varville and Les Billettes without
getting a single copper or so much as a dry crust. His only hope was
in Tournolles, but to reach this place he would have to walk five miles
along the highroad, and he felt so weary that he could hardly drag
himself another yard. His stomach and his pocket were equally 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 t