He drew Nello's fair head fondly to his breast with a tenderer gesture.
"Thou art very poor, my child," he said with a quiver the more in his
aged, trembling voice,--"so poor! It is very hard for thee."

"Nay, I am rich," murmured Nello; and in his innocence he thought
so,--rich with the imperishable powers that are mightier than the might
of kings. And he went and stood by the door of the hut in the quiet
autumn night, and watched the stars troop by and the tall poplars bend
and shiver in the wind. All the casements of the mill-house were lighted,
and every now and then the notes of the flute came to him. The tears
fell down his cheeks, for he was but a child, yet he smiled, for he said
to himself, "In the future!" He stayed there until all was quite still
and dark, then he and Patrasche went within and slept together, long and
deeply, side by side.

Now he had a secret which only Patrasche knew. There was a little
outhouse to the hut, which no one entered but himself,--a dreary place,
but with abundant clear light from the north. Here he had fashioned
himself rudely an easel in rough lumber, and here on a great gray sea of
stretched paper he had given shape to one of the innumerable fancies
which possessed his brain. No one had ever taught him anything; colors
he had no means to buy; he had gone without bread many a time to procure
even the few rude vehicles that he had here; and it was only in black or
white that he could fashion the things he saw. This great figure which
he had drawn here in chalk was only an old man sitting on a fallen
tree,--only that. He had seen old Michel the woodman sitting so at
evening many a time. He had never had a soul to tell him of outline or
perspective, of anatomy or of shadow, and yet he had given all the weary,
worn-out age, all the sad, quiet patience, all the rugged, careworn
pathos of his original, and given them so that the old lonely figure was