One hundred and fifty years of outlawry had made the Frochard clan a wolfish breed; battening on crime, thievery and beggary. The head of the house had suffered the extreme penalty meted out to highwaymen. The precious young hopeful, Jacques, was a chip of the old block––possibly a shade more drunken and a shade less enterprising.

But the real masterful figure was the Widow Frochard, his mother, a hag whose street appearance nurses used to frighten naughty children. Hard masculine features, disheveled locks and piercing black eyes gave her a fearsome look enhanced by a very vigorous moustache, a huge wart near the mouth, the ear-hoops and tobacco pipe that she sported, and the miscellaneous mass of rags that constituted her costume.

In this menage of the begging Frochards, the crippled scissors-grinder Pierre was the only individual worth his salt, and he was 34 heartily despised by his brother Jacques and his mother.

The hag’s black eyes snapped as she saw Louise whom the hunchback had saved from the water.

“Pretty––blind––she’ll beg us lots of money!” she said gleefully to Jacques. But to the girl she pretended aid, and her leathern, liquor-coated voice proclaimed:

“No friends, eh, Dearie? Then I’ll take care of you!”

Only poor Pierre sympathized with Louise’s awful grief in being thrown adrift on Paris through the violent disappearance of her beloved sister. He trembled to think what knavery his wicked kinsfolk meant, though he himself was their helpless slave; the target of kicks, cuffs, and the robbery of all his earnings.

La Frochard led the way to their dank and noisome den, opening from a street trap-door and giving at the other extremity on a sort of water-rat exit underneath the pier. She handed Louise down the steps and taking her things remarked in a self-satisfied tone: “Here are your lodgings, Dearie!”

The old woman arrayed herself in 35 Louise’s shawl, and grinned as she tried on the girl’s widespread garden hat. She flung the girl about roughly, even choking her. To heighten the rosy picture of great wealth to accrue, she took a deep draught of cognac from her loved black bottle. Poor Louise sank down to deep slumber, from which neither the noisy potations of La Frochard and Jacques, nor their cursing and abuse of the hunchback Pierre, sufficed to awaken her.

Next morning the hag pulled the blind girl out of the rough bed and dressed her in beggar’s garments.

“You must go out now on the street with us and sing!” she said.

“... But you promised to help me find Henriette....” said the poor girl, piteously.

“We’ll find her for you one of these days, but in the meantime you must earn your keep. No––I don’t mean, actually beg! You do the singing, and I’ll do the begging.”

“Never!” cried Louise. “You may kill me if you will, but I’ll not be a street beggar. Why, the very first person we meet, I’ll ask to save me and inform the police!”

“I’ll fix you, my fine lady!” screamed La Frochard, throwing her from her. “Come, Jacques,” she said to her ruffian son, “we’ll trying a means of making her mind!” Together they seized and started dragging her to the steps of a sub-cellar. Tremblingly Pierre urged them to desist, but they cast him aside.

Louise was thrust into the dungeon and the trap closed. Black bread and a cup of water was to be her prison fare. Still moaning “Henriette! Henriette!” she groped along the slimy walls and tried the footing of the mingled mud and straw.

Horrors! What were the creeping things she sensed, though sightless? Two raced under her petticoat, one nibbled at her shoe. She jumped high in air and screamed outright.

Rats! They were upon her again, almost swarming. She fled to a corner, leaped on a pile of rags, literally fought them off with both hands! Her screams echoed through the upper den, to the anguish of Pierre and the mocking laughter of La Frochard and Jacques....

Pitiably broken, Louise was pulled out of the vile sink a few hours later, pledging 37 wildly to obey the least of the hag’s commands.

La Frochard knew that her conquest was complete.

Henceforth the girl would be but as a clay figure in her hands––a decoy to lure the golden charity of the rich and sympathetic.

As for Jacques, that ruffian was now eyeing the blind lass closely, and muttering:

“Not bad-looking––I’ll see to it no other man gets her!”

He slapped his knife villainously.