himself rudely an easel in rough lumber, and here on a great gray sea of
stretched paper he had given shape to one of the innumerable fancies which
possessed his brain. No one had ever taught him anything; colors he had no
means to buy; he had gone without bread many a time to procure even the
few rude vehicles that he had here; and it was only in black or white that
he could fashion the things he saw. This great figure which he had drawn
here in chalk was only an old man sitting on a fallen tree--only that.

He had seen old Michel the woodman sitting so at evening many a time. He
had never had a soul to tell him of outline or perspective, of anatomy or
of shadow, and yet he had given all the weary, worn-out age, all the sad,
quiet patience, all the rugged, careworn pathos of his original, and given
them so that the old lonely figure was a poem, sitting there, meditative
and alone, on the dead tree, with the darkness of the descending night
behind him.

It was rude, of course, in a way, and had many faults, no doubt; and yet
it was real, true in nature, true in art, and very mournful, and in a
manner beautiful.

Patrasche had lain quiet countless hours watching its gradual creation
after the labor of each day was done, and he knew that Nello had a
hope--vain and wild perhaps, but strongly cherished--of sending this great
drawing to compete for a prize of two hundred francs a year which it was
announced in Antwerp would be open to every lad of talent, scholar or
peasant, under eighteen, who would attempt to win it with some unaided
work of chalk or pencil. Three of the foremost artists in the town of
Rubens were to be the judges and elect the victor according to his merits.

All the spring and summer and autumn Nello had been at work upon this