"
"My poor fool, my wild dog!" wailed the dwarf mournfully.
"Parpon," asked Valmond suddenly, "where is your mother?"
"It is no matter. She has forgotten--she is safe."
"If she should see him!" said Valmond tentatively, for a sudden thought
had come to him that the mother of these misfits of God was Madame
Degardy.
Parpon sprang to his-feet. "She shall not see him. Ah, you know! You have
guessed?" he cried. "She is all safe with me."
"She shall not see him. She shall not know," repeated the dwarf, his eyes
huddling back in his head with anguish.
"Does she not remember you?"
"She does not remember the living, but she would remember the dead. She
shall not know," he said again.
Then, seizing Valmond's hand, he kissed it, and, without a word, trotted
from the room--a ludicrously pathetic figure.
CHAPTER IX
Now and again the moon showed through the cloudy night, and the air was
soft and kind. Parpon left behind him the village street, and, after a
half mile or more of travel, came to a spot where a crimson light showed
beyond a little hill. He halted a moment, as if to think and listen, then
crawled up the bank and looked down.
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