sides of a range of hills beyond. A fanciful little wooden
building, imitating the form of a Swiss cottage, was placed so as
to command the prospect. Near it, in the shadow of the building,
stood a rustic chair and table--with a color-box on one, and a
portfolio on the other. Fluttering over the grass, at the mercy
of the capricious breeze, was a neglected sheet of drawing-paper.
Francine ran round the pond, and picked up the paper just as it
was on the point of being tilted into the water. It contained a
sketch in water colors of the village and the woods, and Francine
had looked at the view itself with indifference--the picture of
the view interested her. Ordinary visitors to Galleries of Art,
which admit students, show the same strange perversity. The work
of the copyist commands their whole attention; they take no
interest in the original picture.

Looking up from the sketch, Francine was startled. She discovered
a man, at the window of the Swiss summer-house, watching her.

"When you have done with that drawing," he said quietly, "please
let me have it back again."

He was tall and thin and dark. His finely-shaped intelligent
face--hidden, as to the lower part of it, by a curly black
beard--would have been absolutely handsome, even in the eyes of a
schoolgirl, but for the deep furrows that marked it prematurely
between the eyebrows, and at the sides of the mouth. In the same
way, an underlying mockery impaired the attraction of his
otherwise refined and gentle manner. Among his fellow-creatures,
children and dogs were the only critics who appreciated his
merits without discovering the defects which lessened the