on market-days, and as soon
as he heard the sound of footsteps or the rolling of a vehicle, he
reached out his hat, stammering:--

"Charity, if you please!"

But the peasant is not lavish, and for whole weeks he did not bring
back a sou.

Then he became the victim of furious, pitiless hatred. And this is how
he died.

One winter the ground was covered with snow, and it froze horribly.
Now his brother-in-law led him one morning at this season a great
distance along the high-road in order that he might solicit alms. The
blind man was left there all day, and when night came on, the
brother-in-law told the people of his house that he could find no
trace of the mendicant. Then he added:

"Pooh! best not bother about him! He was cold, and got someone to take
him away. Never fear! he's not lost. He'll turn up soon enough
to-morrow to eat the soup."

Next day, he did not come back.

After long hours of waiting, stiffened with the cold, feeling that he
was dying, the blind man began to walk. Being unable to find his way
along the road, owing to its thick coating of ice, he went on at
random, falling into dykes, getting up again, without uttering a
sound, his sole object being to find some house where he could take
shelter.

But by degrees the descending snow made a numbness steal over him, and
his feeble limbs being incapable of carrying him farther, he had to
sit down in the middle of an open field. He did not get up again.

The white flakes which kept continually falling buried him, so that
his body, quite stiff and stark, disappeared under the incessant
accumulation of their rapidly thickening mass; and nothing any longer
indicated the place where the corpse was lying.

His relatives made pretense of inquiring about him and searching for
him for about a week. They even made a show of weeping.

The winter was severe, and the thaw did not set in quickly. Now, one
Sunday, on their way to mass, the farmers noticed a great flight of
crows, who were whirling endlessly above the open field, and then,
like a shower of black rain, descended in a heap at the same spot,
ever going and coming.

The following week these gloomy birds were still there. There was a
crowd of them up in the air, as if they had gathered from all corners
of the horizon; and they swooped down with a great cawing into the
shining snow, which they filled curiously with patches of black, and
in which they kept rummaging obstinately. A young fellow w