ortunates, doomed to unceasing labor, who lived in the bosom of
nature without heeding it and whose souls never rose above the most
material sensations? Was there one point of resemblance which could
attest their original brotherhood to such as he? Arnold doubted this
more and more each moment.

These thoughts had the effect of communicating to his manner a sort of
contemptuous indifference toward his conductor, to whom he ceased to
talk. Moser showed neither surprise nor pain and set to whistling an
air, interrupted from time to time by some brief word of encouragement
to his horses.

Thus they arrived at the farm, where the noise of the bells announced
their coming. A young boy and a woman of middle age appeared on the
threshold.

"Ah, it is the father!" cried the woman, looking back into the house,
where could be heard the voices of several children, who came running to
the door with shouts of joy and pressed around the peasant.

"Wait a moment, youngsters," interrupted the father in his big voice as
he rummaged in the cart and brought forth a covered basket. "Let Fritz
unharness."

But the children continued to besiege the farmer, all talking at once.
He bent to kiss them, one after another; then rising suddenly:

"Where is Jean?" he asked with a quickness that had something of
uneasiness in it.

"Here, father, here," answered a shrill little voice from the farm-house
door; "mother doesn't want me to go out in the rain."

"Stay where you are," said Moser, throwing the traces on the backs of
the horses; "I will go to you, little son. Go in, the rest of you, so as
not to tempt him to come out."

The three children went back to the doorway, where little Jean was
standing beside his mother, who was protecting him from the weather.

He was a poor little creature, so cruelly deformed that at the first
glance one could not have told his age or the nature of his infirmity.
His whole body, distorted by sickness, formed a curved, not to say a
broken line. His disproportionately large head was sunken between two
unequally rounded shoulders, while his body was sustained by two little
crutches; these took the place of the shrunken legs, which could not
support him.

At the farmer's approach he held out his thin arms with an expression of
love that made Moser's furrowed face brighten. The father lifted him in
his strong arms with an exclamation of tender delight.

"Come!" he cried, "hug your father--with both arms-