sauntering vine and splendid, saucy weed. In the centre stood a
sycamore-tree, beneath which it was my custom to smoke a morning pipe and
revolve my profound after-breakfast thoughts.

Judge, then, of my indignant shock, one morning, at finding a stranger
calmly occupying my place. I stood for a moment rooted to the spot, in
the shadow of the encircling woods, and he had not yet seen me. As I
stood, pondering on the best way of dealing with the intruder, a sudden
revulsion of kindness stole over me. For here indeed was a very different
figure from what, in my first shock of surprise, I had expected to see.
No common intruder this. In fact, who could have dreamed of coming upon
so incongruous an apparition as this in an American woodland? How on
earth did this picturesque waif from the Quartier Latin come to stray so
far away from the Boul' Miche! For the little boyish figure of a man that
sat sketching in my place was the Frenchiest-looking Frenchman you ever
saw--with his dark, smoke-dried skin, his long, straight, blue-black
hair, his fine, rather ferocious brown eyes, his long, delicate French
nose, his bristling black moustache and short, sting-shaped imperial. He
wore on his head a soft white felt hat, somewhat of the shape affected by
circus clowns, and too small for him. His coat was of green velveteen
corduroy and he wore knickerbockers of an eloquent plaid.

He was intently absorbed in sketching a prosperous group of weeds, a
crazy quilt of wildly jostling colour, that had grown up around the decay
of a fallen tree, and made a fine blazon of contrast against the massed
foliage in the background. There was no mistake how the stranger loved
this patch of coloured weeds. Here was a man whose whole soul was
evidently--colour. There was a look in his face as if he could just eat
those oranges and purples, and soft greens; and there was a sort of
passionate assurance in the way in which he handled his brushes, and