sleeping in stables and garrets, or oftener in the open air;
sometimes charitably sheltered in a kind man's barn, and perhaps--oh
bliss!--honestly employed with him for a week or two; at others rudely
repulsed as a good-for-nothing and vagabond. Vagabond! That truly was
his profession now. He forgot the charms of a fixed abode. He came
to like his gypsy freedom, the open air and complete independence. He
laughed at his misery, provided it shifted its place occasionally.

[Illustration: SHARE MY CUP.]

[Illustration: BREAKING STONES.]

One day, when Hazard, his ungenerous guardian, seemed to have
quite forgotten him, he walked--on an empty stomach, as the doctors
say--past the lofty walls of a château. A card was placed at the gate
calling for additional hands at a job of digging. Each workman, it
was promised, had a right to a plate of soup before beginning. This
article tempted him. At the gate a lackey, laughing in his face,
told him the notice had been posted there six months: workmen were no
longer wanted. "Wait, though," said the servant, and in another minute
gave the applicant a horse!--a real, live horse in blood and bones,
but in bones especially. "There," said the domestic, "set a beggar
on horseback and see him ride to the devil!" And, laughing with that
unalloyed enjoyment which one's own wit alone produces, he retired
behind his wicket.

[Illustration: SICKNESS AND COURTSHIP.]

The horse thus vicariously fulfilling the functions of a plate of soup
was a wretched glandered beast--not old, but shunned on account of the