For three hours he proceeded his painful journey. Then at final the sight of this woods for the village motivated him with brand new power.

The peasant that is first met, and of who he asked alms, responded:

“So it really is you once again, will it be, you old scamp? Shall we not be rid of you?”

And “Bell” proceeded their method. At each home he got nothing but difficult terms. He made the round associated with the village that is whole but received not a halfpenny for their aches.

He then visited the neighboring farms, toiling through the land that is muddy therefore exhausted he could not raise his crutches through the ground. He came across utilizing the reception that is same. It had been those types of cool, bleak times, as soon as the heart is frozen therefore the mood cranky, and arms usually do not open either to give cash or meals.

As he had checked www flirt4free out most of the houses he knew, “Bell” sank down in the part of the ditch running across Chiquet’s farmyard. Letting his crutches slip to your ground, he stayed motionless, tortured by hunger, but barely smart adequate to recognize to your complete their unutterable misery.

He awaited he knew maybe maybe perhaps not just exactly what, possessed with this obscure hope which persists into the individual heart regardless of everything. He awaited within the part of this farmyard when you look at the biting December wind, some mystical the aid of paradise or from guys, without having the minimum concept whence it absolutely was to reach. Lots of black colored hens ran hither and thither, searching for their meals when you look at the planet which supports all things that are living. Ever on occasion they purchased inside their beaks a grain of corn or even a small pest; chances are they continued their slow, sure look for nutriment.

“Bell” watched them at first without thinking about such a thing. Then the idea took place instead to their belly rather than their mind—the believed that one particular fowls will be good to consume if it had been prepared over a fire of dead lumber.

He failed to mirror which he would definitely commit a theft. He used a rock which lay at your fingertips, and, being of skillful aim, killed during the very first shot the fowl closest to him. The bird dropped on its part, flapping its wings. Others fled extremely thither and hither, and “Bell,” picking right up their crutches, limped across to where their victim lay.

Simply he received a violent blow in his back which made him let go his hold of his crutches and sent him flying ten paces distant as he reached the little black body with its crimsoned head. And Farmer Chiquet, beside himself with rage, cuffed and kicked the marauder while using the fury of a plundered peasant as “Bell” lay defenceless before him.

The farm arms came up additionally and joined up with their master in cuffing the beggar that is lame. Then once they had been fed up with beating him he was carried by them off and shut him up when you look at the woodshed, as they went along to fetch the authorities.

“Bell,” half dead, bleeding and perishing with hunger, lay on to the floor. Came—then night—then dawn evening. But still he previously maybe maybe maybe not consumed.

About midday the authorities arrived. They launched the entranceway of this woodshed because of the utmost precaution, fearing opposition in the beggar’s component, for Farmer Chiquet asserted by him and had had great, difficulty in defending himself that he had been attacked.

The sergeant cried:

But “Bell” could maybe maybe not go. He did their better to raise himself on their crutches, but without success. The authorities, thinking their weakness feigned, pulled him up by primary force and set him between your crutches.