piece of chalk with which he marked the trunks he carried, and sketch
with it upon some rough box-lid or other the picture of a face or form
which he saw in his fancy; so that after a time he was known among the
men as "the artist feller," and grew to have quite a little reputation
among them.

How the rest came about even Larry himself found it hard to tell. But
by and by he was drawing with pencil and pen, and selling his sketches
for what he could get, buying now a brush and then some paints with the
scanty proceeds, and working upon his bits of canvas with all the ardor
of a Raphael himself.


A man sat before an easel in a crowded studio one day, give the last
touch to a painting that stood before him. It pictured the figure of a
lad, ragged and forlorn, lying asleep beneath some sheltering trees.
At first that seems all there was to be seen upon the canvas; but if
one looked closer one was able to discover another figure amid the
vaporous, soft glooms of the place. It grew ever more distinct, until
one had no difficulty in distinguishing the form of a maiden, fair and
frail as a dream. She was bending over the slumbering body of the boy,
as if to arouse him to life by the whispered words she was breathing
against his cheek.

The artist scrawled his signature in the corner of his completed work
and set the canvas in its frame, and then stood before it, scrutinizing
it closely.

"'The Waking Soul!'--I wonder if that is a good name for it?" murmured
he to himself. And then, after a moment, he said to the pictured lad,--