FOUND.
Page 138.
His limbs were stiff with the sharp cold, which had penetrated his threadbare clothes, and his feet were numb with the snow that had worked its way in through the worn, cracked leather of his wretched boots. Oh, yes! I am afraid he was a very funny figure indeed; and that all the little boys in Nullepart would have hooted louder than ever if they could have seen him, as with his long grasshopper legs, wild red hair, and tattered cloak streaming out behind him, he shambled along, slipping and staggering, in the half darkness over that long half-mile of heath, and stone, and prickly bushes, and sly, deceitful snow-drifts that stretched between the edge of the forest and the rocks.
'Here is help,' he shrieked in his shrill voice. 'It is I—I, John Paqualin. Here is help.'
As he passed round in front into the shelter of the tall, grey rocks, Susan Lepage rose up from the foot of them with a great cry.
She flung her arms about him, and rested her fair head on his shoulder.
'Ah! God has sent you,' she sobbed. 'I called upon Him in the bitterness of my anguish, and He has heard me. Save us, John Paqualin; in mercy save me and my children.'
The charcoal-burner's torch slipped from his grasp, and fell hissing upon the ground.
'The dog gets something more than his bone for once,' he said between his teeth.