sympathetic eyes.

One day, when the custodian was out of the way and the doors left ajar, he
got in for a moment after his little friend and saw. "They" were two great
covered pictures on either side of the choir.

Nello was kneeling, rapt as in an ecstasy, before the altar-picture of the
Assumption, and when he noticed Patrasche, and rose and drew the dog
gently out into the air, his face was wet with tears, and he looked up at
the veiled places as he passed them, and murmured to his companion, "It is
so terrible not to see them, Patrasche, just because one is poor and
cannot pay! He never meant that the poor should not see them when he
painted them, I am sure. He would have had us see them any day, every day:
that I am sure. And they keep them shrouded there--shrouded in the dark,
the beautiful things!--and they never feel the light, and no eyes look on
them, unless rich people come and pay. If I could only see them, I would
be content to die."

But he could not see them, and Patrasche could not help him, for to gain
the silver piece that the church exacts as the price for looking on the
glories of the Elevation of the Cross and the Descent of the Cross was a
thing as utterly beyond the powers of either of them as it would have been
to scale the heights of the cathedral spire. They had never so much as a
sou to spare: if they cleared enough to get a little wood for the stove, a
little broth for the pot, it was the utmost they could do. And yet the
heart of the child was set in sore and endless longing upon beholding the
greatness of the two veiled Rubens.

[Illustration: tree]
[Illustration: scenery]