in silence,
having lost hope.

Before long their money came to an end, and they worked out by the day
in the farms and inns, doing the most menial work, eating what was left
from the tables, sleeping on the ground and suffering from cold. Then as
they became enfeebled by hard work no one would employ them any
longer, and they were forced to beg along the high roads. They accosted
passers-by in an entreating voice and with sad, discouraged faces; they
begged a morsel of bread from the harvesters who were dining around a
tree in the fields at noon, and they ate in silence seated on the edge
of a ditch. An innkeeper to whom they told their story said to them one
day:

"I know some one who had lost their daughter, and they found her in
Paris."

They at once set out for Paris.

When they entered the great city they were bewildered by its size and by
the crowds that they saw. But they knew that Jean must be in the midst
of all these people, though they did not know how to set about looking
for him. Then they feared that they might not recognize him, for he was
only five years old when they last saw him.

They visited every place, went through all the streets, stopping
whenever they saw a group of people, hoping for some providential
meeting, some extraordinary luck, some compassionate fate.

They frequently walked at haphazard straight ahead, leaning one against
the other, looking so sad and poverty-stricken that people would give
them alms without their asking.

They spent every Sunday at the doors of the churches, watching the
crowds entering and leaving, trying to distinguish among the faces one
that might be familiar. Several times they thought they recognized him,
but always found they had made a mistake.

In the vestibule of one of the churches which they visited the most
frequently there was an old dispenser of holy Water who had become their
friend. He also had a very sad history, and their sympathy for him had
established a bond of close friendship between them. It ended by them
all three living together in a poor lodging on the top floor of a large
house situated at some distance, quite on the outskirts of the city,
and the wheelwright would sometimes take his new friend's place at the
church when the latter was ill.

Winter came, a very severe winter. The poor holy water sprinkler died
and the parish priest appointed the wheelwright, whose misfortunes had
come to his knowledge, to replace him. He went