[Illustration:]




TWICE A CHILD.


Halfway up the mountain-side, overlooking a ravine, through which a
streamlet flowed to the lake, stood a woodman's cottage. In the room on
which the front door opened were two persons--an infant in a wooden
cradle, in the corner between the fire-place and the window; and, seated
on a stool in the flood of sunlight that streamed through the doorway,
an old man. His lips were moving slightly, and his face had the look of
one whose thoughts were far away. On the patch of floor in front of him
lay cross-bars of sunlight, which flowed in through the casement window.
The sky overhead was cloudless, while the murky belt on the horizon was
not visible from the cottage door. In the windless calm no leaf seemed
to stir in the forest around. The cottage clock in the corner ticked the
passing moments; the wild cry of the "curry fowl" was heard now and
again from the lake; there was no other sound in the summer afternoon,
and the deep heart of nature seemed at rest.

The old man's eyes rested on the bars of sunlight, but he saw another
scene. On his face, in which the simplicity of childhood seemed to have
reappeared, was a knowing, amused look, expressing infinite relish of
some inward thought, the simple essence of mischief. Bars of sunlight,
just like those, used to lie on the schoolroom floor when he was a
little boy, and was sent to Dame Gartney's school to be kept out of
harm's way, and to learn what he might. He saw himself, an urchin of