KNIFE DUEL AND ESCAPE
The bundle on the cellar floor of the Frochards den stirred again, this time more actively.
The crippled knife-grinder Pierre had entered. His mother was again busied with her potations. Under the half-lifted rags showed the tear-stained face of Louise. The heavy fatigue of street mendicancy had wrapped her in deep sleep, from which she woke with a start to her wretched surroundings. The misery of it all overwhelmed her. She sobbed, and the big tears descended from her blind eyes.
“Don’t cry, Louise!” begged the almost equally wretched Pierre. “There may yet be escape and the finding of your sister. Oh!” he said to himself. “If I had but the courage to lay down my life that I might make her happy!”
The ruffian Jacques Frochard was exhibiting a sinister interest in the blind girl. 125 He had forbidden Pierre to speak to her or come near her, and now as he entered, the crippled brother shrank away. “Get up and go to work!” said Mother Frochard to the girl roughly, yanking her to her feet.
“I’ll find a way to make her work!” laughed Jacques with fiendish coarseness. “You’ll slave for me, eh, my pretty? Yes, for you, no one but Jacques!”
He leered at her as he appropriated the coins of her singing.
Huddled in the corner, the silent cripple bit his finger knuckles until they bled....