pretty group in the long meadow behind the mill, where the aftermath had
that day been cut. It was his little daughter sitting amidst the hay, with
the great tawny head of Patrasche on her lap, and many wreaths of poppies
and blue corn-flowers round them both: on a clean smooth slab of pine wood
the boy Nello drew their likeness with a stick of charcoal.

The miller stood and looked at the portrait with tears in his eyes, it was
so strangely like, and he loved his only child closely and well. Then he
roughly chid the little girl for idling there whilst her mother needed her
within, and sent her indoors crying and afraid: then, turning, he snatched
the wood from Nello's hands. "Dost do much of such folly?" he asked, but
there was a tremble in his voice.

Nello colored and hung his head. "I draw everything I see," he murmured.

The miller was silent: then he stretched his hand out with a franc in it.
"It is folly, as I say, and evil waste of time: nevertheless, it is like
Alois, and will please the house-mother. Take this silver bit for it and
leave it for me."

The color died out of the face of the young Ardennois; he lifted his head
and put his hands behind his back. "Keep your money and the portrait both,
Baas Cogez," he said, simply. "You have been often good to me." Then he
called Patrasche to him, and walked away across the field.

"I could have seen them with that franc," he murmured to Patrasche, "but I
could not sell her picture--not even for them."

Baas Cogez went into his mill-house sore troubled in his mind. "That lad
must not be so much with Alois," he said to his wife that night. "Trouble