sight. And Louis, with the quick instinct of childhood, learned to
expect nothing from his father, whose attention he never tried to
attract.

As if to make amends for his physical deformity, he possessed an
uncommon mind, and when he was nearly six years of age accident
revealed to him the reason of his father's continued coldness, and
wrung from him the first tears he had ever shed for his misfortune.
He heard one day his mother praying that God would soften her
husband's heart toward his poor hunchback boy, who was not to blame
for his misfortune--and laying his head upon the broad arm of the
chair which had been made for him, he wept bitterly, for he knew now
why he was not loved. That night, as in his crib he lay, watching
the stars which shone upon him through the window, and wondering if
in heaven there were hunchback boys like him, he overheard his
father talking to his mother, and the words that his father said
were never forgotten to his dying day. There were, "Don't ask me to
be reconciled to a cripple! What good can he do me? He will never
earn his own living, lame as he is, and will only be in the way."

"Oh, father, father," the cripple essayed to say, but he could not
speak, so full of pain was his little, bursting heart, and that
night he lay awake, praying that he might die and so be out of the
way.

The next morning he asked Maude to draw him to the churchyard where
"his other mother," as he called her, was buried. Maude complied,
and when they were there, placed him at his request upon the ground,
where stretching himself out at his full length, he said: "Look,
Maude, won't mine be a little grave?" then, ere she could answer the