It was in 1812, in a village in France. A little boy tripped and fell with pointed tools i

n his hand. In that accident he became blind in one eye. Soon he lost the sight of the other. The child was Louis Braille. He would not see again. But he would bring light to the world of the blind. They would honor his name.

At ten, Louis went to the school for the blind in Paris. There he learned to read the 26 letters of the alphabet. The letters of the alphabet are very much alike. They had to be very big for Louis to feel the difference in their shapes. The teacher made letters from twigs. He then guided the blind boy's fingers along each shape.

Next Louis used books, but they were not books like the ones we use. The teacher had made them. The letters were cut out of cloth and pasted on the pages. Each letter was very large. The word would almost fill a page of the book we are using now. Just think how big one of Louis's books would have to be!

One day a pupil came running to the teacher. Excitedly, the pupil showed him a printed card. The type had hit the card so hard that it made bumps on the other side. The pupil could feel the bumps that were the letters. These bumpy letters gave the teacher an idea.

The teacher used type that made the letters slick out from the page, but still the letters had to he big so that a blind person could feel the difference between them. A book was still very large. And reading it took a very long lime.

As Louis grew older, he was more and more eager to learn. But he knew it would take him five years to learn what a sighted person could learn in one.

Once he said to his father, "I can tell one bird from another by its call. I can know the door to my house by its feel. But am I never to know what lies outside hearing and feeling？"

"There are books." his father said.

"Yes," said Louis. "Only books can free the blind. But the books we have aren't good enough!"

Louis wanted to make books that were good enough. Instead of letters, he wanted to use shapes that were easy to tell apart by touch. Louis tried and triad, but he couldn't come up with a code that would work.

Braille took a job at the school for the blind in Paris. While teaching there, he heard of a kind of "night writing. "This was a code that a French army captain had made up for sending messages on the battle field.

At night, a soldier could read a message without a light. The message was "written" in raised dots and dashes. It was "read" by touch.

Suddenly the meaning of his code hit Braille. If a sighted person could read it in darkness, a blind person could read it too. A blind person was always in darkness.

"I must talk to this captain. I must learn more about night writing." Braille said.

He got a friend to take him to the captain. The captain told him that he used an awl to punch bumps into thick paper. This made small dots which can be felt on the other side.

Louis Braille never rested from that day until five years later. He worked and worked and finally came up with a code.

Braille used raised dots, just as in night writing. He used from one to six dots for each letter of the alphabet. He arranged them differently for each letter.

By using six dots, he made 63 different arrangements. In addition to the letters, he could have punctuation marks and even short words like "the" and "for".

Louis Braille died in 1852. But his name lives on. It lives on as the name of the code that he invented, the code that is still used by the blind. There are books printed in Braille. There are magazines, such as Reader's Digest, printed in Braille. There are even playing cards in Braille. Braille is the name of the man and the code that gives windows to the blinds.

How does the tool called an awl play a part in the story？

A．Louis Braille's teacher at the school for the blind made letters with it.

B．It caused Braille's blindness.

C．The captain used it in night writing.

D．Braille used it to read books.