but what my
son did walk it once;--and he a shoemaker, who knows what walking costs;
and he is well-to-do there now--not that he ever writes. When they want
nothing people never write."

"And he walked into Paris?"

"Yes, ten years ago. He had nothing but a few sous and an ash stick, and
he had a fancy to try his luck there. And after all our feet were given
us to travel with. If you go there and you see him, tell him to send me
something--I am tired of selling nuts."

Bebee said nothing, but went on her road; since there was no other way
but to walk, she would take that way; the distance and the hardship did
not appall two little feet that were used to traverse so many miles of
sun-baked summer dust and of frozen winter mud unblenchingly year after
year.

The time it would take made her heart sink indeed. He was ill. God knew
what might happen. But neither the length of leagues nor the fatigue of
body daunted her. She only saw his eyes dim with pain and his lips burned
with fever.

She would walk twenty miles a day, and then, perhaps, she might get lifts
here and there on hay wagons or in pedlers' carts; people had always used
to be kind to her. Anyhow she counted she might reach Paris well in
fifteen days.

She sat under a shrine in a by street a moment, and counted the copper
pieces she had on her; they were few, and the poor pretty buckles that
she might have sold to get money were stolen.

She had some twenty sous and a dozen eggs; she thought she might live on
that; she had wanted to take the eggs to him, but after all, to keep life
in her until she could reach Paris was the one great thing.

"What a blessing it is to have been born poor; and to have lived
hardly--one wants so little!" she thought to herself.

Then she put up the sous in the linen bosom of her gown, and trimmed her
little lantern and knelt down in the quiet darkness and prayed a moment,
with the hot agonized tears rolling down her face, and then rose and
stepped out bravely in the cool of the night, on the great southwest road
towards Paris.

The thought never once crossed her to turn back, and go again into the
shelter of her own little hut among the flowers. He was sick there,
dying, for anything she knew; that was the only thing she remembered.

It was a clear, starlit night, and everywhere the fragrance of the spring
was borne in from the wide green plains, and the streams where the rushes
were blowing.

She walked ten miles ea