ently a complete stranger to the young man's usual sensations. When, on issuing from the forest, Arnold pointed to the magnificent horizon purpled by the last rays of the setting sun, the farmer contented himself with a grimace.

"Bad weather for to-morrow," he muttered, drawing his cloak about his shoulders.

"One ought to be able to see the entire valley from here," went on Arnold, striving to pierce the gloom that already clothed the foot of the mountain.

"Yes, yes," said Moser, shaking his head; "the ridge is high enough for that. There's an invention for you that isn't good for much."

"What invention?"

"The mountains."

"You would rather have everything level?"

"What a question!" cried the farmer, laughing. "You might as well ask me if I would not rather ruin my horses."

"True," said Arnold in a tone of somewhat contemptuous irony. "I had forgotten the horses! It is clear that God should have thought principally of them when he created the world."

"I don't know as to God," answered Moser quietly, "but the engineers certainly made a mistake in forgetting them when they made the roads. The horse is the laborer's best friend, monsieur-without disrespect to the oxen, which have their value too."

Arnold looked at the peasant. "So you see in your surroundings only the advantages you can derive from them?" he asked gravely. "The forest, the mountains, the clouds, all say nothing to you? You have never paused before the setting sun or at the sight of the woods lighted by the stars?"

"I?" cried the farmer. "Do you take me for a maker of almanacs? What should I get out of your starlight and the setting sun? The main thing is to earn enough for three meals a day and to keep one's stomach warm. Would monsieur like a drink of cognac? It comes from the other side of the Rhine."

He held out a little wicker-covered bottle to Arnold, who refused by a gesture. The positive coarseness of the peasant had rekindled his regret and his contempt. Were they really men such as he was, these unfortunates, 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-hard! How has he been since yesterday?" The mother shook her head.

"Always the cough," she answered in a low tone.

"It's nothing, father," the child answered in his shrill voice. "Louis had drawn me too fast in my wheeled chair; but I am well, very well; I feel as strong as a man.'

The peasant placed him carefully on the ground, set him upon his little crutches, which had fallen, and looked at him with an air of satisfaction.

"Don't you think he's growing, wife?" he asked in the tone of a man who wishes to be encouraged. "Walk a bit, Jean; walk, boy! He walks more quickly and more strongly. It'll all come right, wife; we must only be patient."

The farmer's wife made no reply, but her eyes turned toward the feeble child with a look of despair so deep that Arnold trembled; fortunately Moser paid no heed.

"Come, the whole brood of you," he went on, opening the basket he had taken from the cart; "here is something for every one! In line and hold out your hands."

The peasant had displayed three small white rolls glazed in the baking; three cries of joy burst forth simultaneously and six hands advanced to seize the rolls, but they all paused at the word of command. "And Jean?" asked the childish voices.

"To the devil with Jean," answered Moser gayly; "there is nothing for him to-night. Jean shall have his share another time."

But the child smiled and tried to get up to look into the basket. The farmer stepped back a pace, took off the cover carefully, and lifting his arm with an air of solemnity, displayed before the eyes of all a cake of gingerbread garnished with almonds and pink and white sugar-plums.

There was a general shout of admiration. Jean himself could not restrain a cry of delight; a slight flush rose to his pale face and he held out his hands. with an air of joyful expectancy.

“Ah, you like it, little mole!" cried the peasant, whose face was radiant at the sight of the child's pleasure; "take it, old man, take it; it is nothing but sugar and honey."

He placed the gingerbread in the hands of the little hunchback, who trembled with happiness, watched him hobble off, and turning to Arnold when the sound of the crutches was lost in the house, said with a slight break in his voice:

"He is my eldest. Sickness has deformed him a little, but he's a shrewd fellow and it only depends upon us to make a gentleman of him."

While speaking he had crossed the first room on the ground-floor and led his guest into a species of dining-room, the whitewashed walls of which were decorated only with a few rudely colored prints. As he entered, Arnold saw Jean seated on the floor and surrounded by his brothers, among whom he was dividing the cake given him by his father. But each one objected to the size of his portion and wished to lessen it; it required all the little hunchback's eloquence to make them accept what he had given them. For some time the young sportsman watched this dispute with singular interest, and when the children had gone out again he expressed his admiration to the farmer's wife.

"It is quite true," she said with a smile and a sigh, "that there are times when it seems as though it were a good thing for them to see Jean's infirmity. It is hard for them to give up to each other, but not one