afternoon--oh, miracle and ecstasy!--the step of the master
crossed the floor to the obscured corner where he lay under his
spiders' webs, and the hand of the master touched him. Lampblack
felt sick and faint with rapture. Had recognition come at last?

The master took him up, "You will do for this work," he said; and
Lampblack was borne trembling to an easel. The colors, for once in
their turn neglected, crowded together to watch, looking in their
bright tin tubes like rows of little soldiers in armor.

"It is the old dull Deposit," they murmured to one another, and
felt contemptuous, yet were curious, as scornful people often will
be.

"But I am going to be glorious and great," thought Lampblack, and
his heart swelled high; for never more would they be able to hurl
the name of Deposit at him, a name which hurt him none the less,
but all the more indeed, because it was unintelligible.

"You will do for this work," said the master, and let Lampblack
out of his metal prison house into the light and touched him with
the brush that was the wand of magic.

"What am I going to be?" wondered Lampblack, as he felt himself
taken on to a large piece of deal board, so large that he felt he
must be going to make the outline of an athlete or the shadows of
a tempest at the least.

Himself he could not tell what he was becoming: he was happy
enough and grand enough only to be employed, and, as he was being