Towards the end of the summer following the fever, Mrs. Lake failed rapidly. She sat out of doors most of the day, the miller moving her chair from one side to another of the mill to get the shade. Master Swift brought her big nosegays from his garden, at which she would smell for hours, as if the scent soothed her. She spoke very little, but she watched the sky constantly.

One evening there was a gorgeous sunset. In all its splendor, with a countless multitude of little clouds about it bright with its light, the glory of the sun seemed little less than that of the Lord Himself, coming with ten thousand of His saints, and the poor woman gazed as if her withered, wistful eyes could see her children among the radiant host. "I do think the Lord be coming to-night, Master Swift," she said. "And He'll bring them with Him."

She gazed on after all the glory had faded, and lingered till it grew dark, and the schoolmaster had gone home. It was not till her dress was quite wet with dew that Jan insisted upon her going indoors.

They were coming round the mill in the dusk, when a cry broke from Mrs. Lake's lips; which was only an echo of a louder one from Jan. A woman creeping round the mill in the opposite direction had just craned her neck forward so that Jan and his foster-mother saw her face for an instant before it disappeared. Why Jan was so terrified, he would have been puzzled to say, for the woman was not hideous, though she had an ugly mouth. But he was terrified, and none the less so from a conviction that she was looking intently and intentionally at him. When he got his foster-mother indoors, the miller was disposed to think the affair was a fancy; but, as if the shock had given a spur to her feeble senses, Mrs. Lake said in a loud clear voice, "Maester, it be the woman that brought our Jan hither!"

But when the miller ran out, no one was to be seen.



CHAPTER XXX.

JAN'S PROSPECTS AND MASTER SWIFT'S PLANS.—TEA AND MILTON.—NEW PARENTS.—PARTING WITH RUFUS.—JAN IS KIDNAPPED.

This shock seemed to give a last jar to the frail state of Mrs. Lake's health, and the sleep into which she fell that night passed into a state of insensibility in which her sorely tried spirit was released without pain.

It was said that the windmiller looked twice his age from trouble. But his wan appearance may have been partly due to the inroads of a lung disease, which comes to millers from constantly inhaling the flour-dust. His cheeks grew hollow, and his wasted hands displayed the windmiller's coat of arms {2} with painful distinctness. The schoolmaster spent most of his evenings at the mill; but sometimes Jan went to tea with him, and by Master Lake's own desire he went to school once more.

Master Swift thought none the less of Jan's prospects that it was useless to discuss them with Master Lake. All his plans were founded on the belief that he himself would live to train the boy to be a windmiller, whilst Master Swift's had reference to the conviction that "miller's consumption" would deprive Jan of his foster-father long before he was old enough to succeed him. And had the miller made his will? Master Swift made his, and left his few savings to Jan. He could not help hoping for some turn of Fortune's wheel which should give the lad to him for his own.

Jan was not likely to lack friends. The Squire had heard with amazement that Master Chuter's new sign was the work of a child, and he offered to place him under proper instruction to be trained as an artist. But, at the time that this offer came, Jan was waiting on his foster mother, and he refused to betray Abel's trust. The Rector also wished to provide for him, but he was even more easily convinced that Jan's present duty lay at home. Master Swift too urged this in all good faith, but his personal love for Jan, and the dread of parting with him, had an influence of which he was hardly conscious.

One evening, a few weeks after Mrs. Lake's death, Jan had tea, followed by poetry, with the schoolmaster. Master Swift often recited at the windmill. The miller liked to hear hymns his wife had liked, and a few patriotic and romantic verses; but he yawned over Milton, and fell asleep under Keats, so the schoolmaster reserved his favorites for Jan's ear alone.

When tea was over, Jan sat on the rush-bottomed chair, with his feet on Rufus, on that side of the hearth which faced the window, and on the other side sat Master Swift, with the mongrel lying by him, and he spouted from Milton. Jan, familiar with many a sunrise, listened with parted lips of pleasure, as the old man trolled forth, -

"Right against the eastern gate, Where the great sun begins his state, Robed in flames and amber light,"

and with even more sympathy to the latter part of 'Il Penseroso;' and, as when this was ended he begged for yet more, the old man began 'Lycidas.' He knew most of it by heart, and waving his hand, with his eyes fixed expressively on Jan, he cried, -

"Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble minds) To scorn delights, and live laborious days."

And tears filled his eyes, and made his voice husky, as he went on, -

"But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears" -

Master Swift stopped suddenly. Rufus was growling, and Jan was white and rigid, with his eyes fixed on the window.

As in most North countrymen, there was in the schoolmaster an ineradicable touch of superstition. He cursed the "unlucky" poem, and flinging the book from him ran to his favorite. As soon as Jan could speak, he gasped, "The woman that brought me to the mill!" But when Master Swift went to search the garden he could find no one.

Remembering the former alarm, and that no one was to be seen then, Master Swift came to the conclusion that in each case it was a delusion.

"Ye're a dear good lad, Jan," said he, "but ye've fagged yourself out. Take the dog with ye to-morrow for company, and your sketch- book, and amuse yourself. I'll not expect ye at school. And get away to your bed now. I told Master Lake I shouldn't let ye away to-night."

Jan went to bed, and next morning was up with the lark, and with Rufus at his heels went off to a distant place, where from a mound, where a smaller road crossed the highway to London, there was a view which he wished to sketch under an early light. As he drew near, he saw a small cart, at one side of which the horse was feeding, and at the foot of the mound sat a woman with a pedler's basket.

When Jan recognized her, it was too late to run away. And whither could he have run? The four white roads gleamed unsheltered over the plains; there was no place to hide in, and not a soul in sight.

When the large-mouthed woman seized Jan in her arms, and kissing him cried aloud, "Here he is at last! My child, my long lost child!" the despair which sank into the poor boy's heart made him speechless. Was it possible that this woman was his mother? His foster-mother's words tolled like a knell in his ears,—"The woman that brought our Jan hither." At the sound of Sal's voice the hunchback appeared from behind the cart, and his wife dragged Jan towards him, crying, "Here's our dear son! our pretty, clever little son."

"I bean't your son!" cried poor Jan, desperately. "My mother's dead." For a moment the Cheap Jack's wife seemed staggered; but unluckily Jan added, "She died last month," and it was evident that he knew nothing of his real history.

"Oh, them mill people, them false wretches!" screamed the woman. "Have I been a paying 'em for my precious child, all this time, for 'em to teach him to deny his own mother! The brutes!"

Jan's face and eyes blazed with passion. "How dare you abuse my good father and mother!" he cried. "YOU be the wretch, and" -

But at this, and the same moment, the Cheap Jack seized Jan furiously by the throat, and Rufus sprang upon the hunchback. The hunchback was in the greater danger, from which only his wife's presence of mind saved him. She shrieked to him to let Jan go, that he might call off the dog, which the vindictive little Cheap Jack was loath to do. And when Jan had got Rufus off, and was holding him by the collar, the hunchback seized a hatchet with which he had been cutting stakes, and rushed upon the dog. Jan put himself between them, crying incoherently, "Let him alone! He's not mine— he won't hurt you—I'll send him home—I'll let un loose if ye don't;" and Sal held back her husband, and said, "If you'll behave civil, Jan, my dear, and as you should do to your poor mother, you may send the dog home. And well for him too, for John's a man that's not very particular what he does to them that puts him out in a place like this where there's no one to tell tales. He'd chop him limb from limb, as soon as not."

Jan shuddered. There was no choice but to save Rufus. He clung round the curly brown neck in one agonized embrace, and then steadied his voice for an authoritative, "Home, Rufus!" as he let him go. Rufus hesitated, and looked dangerously at the hunchback, who lifted the hatchet. Jan shouted angrily, "Home, Rufus!" and Rufus obeyed. Twenty times, as his familiar figure, with the plumy tail curled sideways, lessened along the road, was Jan tempted to call him back to his destruction; but he did not. Only when the brown speck was fairly lost to sight, his utter friendlessness overwhelmed him, and falling on his knees he besought the woman with tears to let him go,—at least to tell Master Lake all about it.

The hunchback began to reply with angry oaths, but Sal made signs to him to be silent, and said, "It comes very hard to me, Jan, to be treated this way by my only son, but, if you'll be a good boy, I'm willing to oblige you, and we'll drive round by the mill to let you see your friends, though it's out of the way too."

Jan was profuse of thanks, and by the woman's desire he sat down to share their breakfast. The hunchback examined his sketch-book, and, as he laid it down again, he asked, "Did you ever make picters on stone, eh?"

"Before I could get paper, I did, sir," said Jan.

"But could you now? Could you make 'em on a flat stone, like a paving-stone?"

"If I'd any thing to draw with, I could," said Jan. "I could draw on any thing, if I had something in my hand to draw with."

The Cheap Jack's face became brighter, and in a mollified tone he said to his wife, "He's a prime card for such a young un. It's a rum thing, too! A man I knowed was grand at screeving, but he said himself he was nowheres on paper. He made fifteen to eighteen shillin' a week on a average," the hunchback continued. "I've knowed him take two pound."

"Did you ever draw fish, my dear?" he inquired.

"No, sir," said Jan. "But I've drawn pigs and dogs, and I be mostly able to draw any thing I sees, I think."

The Cheap Jack whistled. "Profiles pays well," he murmured; "but the tip is the Young Prodigy."

"We're so pleased to see what a clever boy you are, Jan," said Sal; "that's all, my dear. Put the bridle on the horse, John, for we've got to go round by the mill."

Whilst the Cheap Jack obeyed her, Sal poked in the cart, from which she returned with three tumblers on a plate. She gave one to her husband, took one herself, and gave the third to Jan.

"Here's to your health, love," said she; "drink to mine, Jan, and I'll be a good mother to you." Jan tasted, and put his glass down again, choking. "It's so strong!" he said.

The Cheap Jack looked furious. "Nice manners they've taught this brat of yours!" he cried to Sal. "Do ye think I'm going to take my 'oss a mile out of the road to take him to see his friends, when he won't so much as drink our good healths?"

"Oh! I will, indeed I will, sir," cried Jan. He had taken a good deal of medicine during his illness, and he had learned the art of gulping. He emptied the little tumbler into his mouth, and swallowed the contents at a gulp.

They choked him, but that was nothing. Then he felt as if something seized him in the inside of every limb. After he lost the power of moving, he could hear, and he heard the Cheap Jack say, "I'd go in for the Young Prodigy; genteel from the first; only, if we goes among the nobs, he may be recognized. He's a rum-looking beggar."

"If you don't go a drinking every penny he earns," said Sal, pointedly, "we'll soon get enough in a common line to take us to Ameriky, and he'll be safe enough there." On this Jan thought that he made a most desperate struggle and remonstrance. But in reality his lips never moved from their rigidity, and he only rolled his head upon his shoulder. After which he remembered no more.



CHAPTER XXXI.

SCREEVING.—AN OLD SONG.—MR. FORD'S CLIENT.—THE PENNY GAFF.—JAN RUNS AWAY.

There was a large crowd, but large crowds gather quickly in London from small causes. It was in an out-of-the-way spot too, and the police had not yet tried to disperse it.

The crowd was gathered round a street-artist who was "screeving," or drawing pictures on the pavement in colored chalks. A good many men have followed the trade in London with some success, but this artist was a wan, meagre-looking child. It was Jan. He drew with extraordinary rapidity; not with the rapidity of slovenliness, but with the rapidity of a genius in the choice of what Ruskin calls "fateful lines." At his back stood the hunchback, who "pattered" in description of the drawings as glibly as he used to "puff" his own wares as a Cheap Jack.

"Cats on the roof of a 'ouse. Look at 'em, ladies and gentlemen; and from their harched backs to their tails and whiskers, and the moon a-shining in the sky, you'll say they're as natteral as life. Bo-serve the fierceness in the eye of that black Tom. The one that's a-coming round the chimney-pot is a Sandy; yellow ochre in the body, and the markings in red. There isn't a harpist living could do 'em better, though I says it that's the lad's father."

The cats were very popular, and so were the Prize Pig, Playful Porkers, Sow and her Little Ones, as exhibited by the Cheap Jack. But the prime favorite was "The Faithful Friend," consisting of sketches of Rufus in various attitudes, including a last sleep on the grave of a supposititious master, which Jan drew with a heart that ached as if it must break.

It was growing dark, but the exhibition had been so successful that day, and the crowd was still so large, that the hunchback was loath to desist. At a sign from him, Jan put his colored chalks into a little pouch in front of him, and drew in powerful chiaroscuro with soft black chalk and whitening. These sketches were visible for some time, and the interest of the crowd did not abate.

Suddenly a flush came over Jan's wan cheeks. A baker who had paused for a moment to look, and then passed on, was singing as he went, and the song and the man's accent were both familiar to Jan.

"The swallow twitters on the barn, The rook is cawing on the tree, And in the wood the ring-dove coos" -

"What's your name, boy?"

The peremptory tone of the question turned Jan's attention from the song, which died away down the street, and looking up he met a pair of eyes as black as his own, and Mr. Ford's client repeated his question. On seeing that a "swell" had paused to look, the Cheap Jack hurried to Jan's side, and was in time to answer.

"John Smith's his name, sir. He's slow of speech, my lord, though very quick with his pencil. There's not many artists can beat him, though I says it that shouldn't, being his father."

"YOU his father?" said the gentleman. "He is not much like you."

"He favours his mother more, my lord," said the Cheap Jack; "and that's where he gets his talents too."

"No one ever thought he got 'em from you, old hump!" said one of the spectators, and there was a roar of laughter from the bystanders.

Mr. Ford's client still lingered, though the staring and pushing of the rude crowd were annoying to him.

"Do you really belong to this man?" he asked of Jan, and Jan replied, trembling, "Yes, sir."

"Your son doesn't look as if you treated him very well," said the gentleman, turning to the Cheap Jack. "Take that, and give him a good supper this evening. He deserves it."

As the Cheap Jack stooped for the half crown thrown to him, Mr. Ford's client gave Jan some pence, saying, "You can keep these yourself." Jan's face, with a look of gratitude upon it, seemed to startle him afresh, but it was getting dark, and the crowd was closing round him. Jan had just entertained a wild thought of asking his protection, when he was gone.

What the strange gentleman had said about his unlikeness to the Cheap Jack, and also the thoughts awakened by hearing the old song, gave new energy to a resolve to which Jan had previously come. He had resolved to run away.

Since he awoke from the stupor of the draught which Sal had given him at the cross-roads, and found himself utterly in the power of the unscrupulous couple who pretended to be his parents, his life had been miserable enough. They had never intended to take him back to the mill, and, since they came to London and he was quite at their mercy, they had made no pretence of kindness. That they kept him constantly at work could hardly be counted an evil, for his working hours were the only ones with happiness in them, except when he dreamed of home. Not the cold pavement chilling him through his ragged clothes, not the strange staring and jesting of the rough crowds, not even the hideous sense of the hunchback's vigilant oversight of him, could destroy his pleasure in the sense of the daily increasing powers of his fingers, in which genius seemed to tremble to create. In the few weeks of his apprenticeship to screeving, Jan had improved more quickly than he might have done under such teaching as the Squire had been willing to procure for the village genius. At the peril of floggings from the Cheap Jack, too many of which had already scarred his thin shoulders, he ransacked his brains for telling subjects, and forced from his memory the lines which told most, and told most quickly, of the pathetic look on Rufus's face, the anger, pleasure, or playfulness of the mill cats. Perhaps none of us know what might be forced, against our natural indolence, from the fallow ground of our capabilities in many lines. The spirit of a popular subject in the fewest possible strokes was what Jan had to aim at for his daily bread, under peril of bodily harm hour after hour, for day after day, and his hand gained a cunning it might never otherwise have learned, and could never unlearn now.

In other respects, his learning was altogether of evil. Perhaps because they wished to reconcile him to his life, perhaps because his innocent face and uncorrupted character were an annoyance and reproach to the wicked couple, they encouraged Jan to associate with the boys of their own and the neighboring courts.

Many people are sorry to believe that there are a great many wicked and depraved grown-up people in all large towns, whose habits of vice are so firm, and whose moral natures are so loose, that their reformation is practically almost hopeless. But much fewer people realize the fact that thousands of little children are actively, hideously vicious and degraded. And yet it is better that this should be remembered than that, since, though it is more painful, it is more hopeful. It is hard to reform vicious children, but it is easier than to reform vicious men and women.

Little boys and little girls of eight or nine or ten years old, who are also drunkards, sweaters, thieves, gamblers, liars, and vicious, made Jan a laughing-stock, because of his simple childlike ways. They called him "green;" but, when he made friends with them by drawing pictures for them, they tried to teach him their own terrible lore. Once the Cheap Jack gave Jan a penny to go with some other boys to a penny theatre, or "gaff." The depravity of the entertainment was a light matter to the depravity of the children by whom the place was crowded, and who had not so much lost as never found shame. Jan was standing amongst them, when he caught sight of a boy with a white head leaning over the gallery, whose face had a curious accidental likeness to Abel's. The expression was quite different, for this one was partly imbecile, but there was just likeness enough to recall the past with an unutterable pang. What would Abel have said to see him there? Jan could not breathe in the place. The others were engaged, and he fought his way out.

What he had heard and seen rang in his ears and danced before his eyes after he crept to bed, as the dawn broke over the streets. But as if Abel himself had watched by his bedside as he used to do, and kept evil visions away, it did not trouble his dreams. He dreamed of the windmill, and of his foster-mother; of the little wood, and of Master Swift and Rufus.

After that night Jan had resolved that, whether Sal were his mother or not, he would run away. In the strength of his foster-brother's pious memory he would escape from this evil life. He would beg his way back to the village, and to the upright, godly old schoolmaster, or at least die in the country on the road thither. He had not associated with the ragamuffins of the court without learning a little of their cunning; and he had waited impatiently for a chance of eluding the watchfulness of the Cheap Jack.

But the sound of that song and the meeting with Mr. Ford's client determined him to wait no longer, but to make a desperate effort for freedom then and there. The Cheap Jack was collecting the pence, and Jan had made a few bold black strokes as a beginning of a new sketch, when he ran up to the Cheap Jack and whispered, "Get me a ha'perth of whitening, father, as fast as you can. There's an oil- shop yonder."

"All right, Jan," said the hunchback. "Keep 'em together, my dear, meanwhile. We're doing prime, and you shall have a sausage for supper."

As the Cheap Jack waddled away for the whitening, Jan said to the lockers-on, "Keep your places, ladies and gentlemen, till I return, and keep your eyes on the drawing, which is the last of the series," and ran off down a narrow street, at right angles to the oil-shop.

The crowd waited patiently for some moments. Then the Cheap Jack hurried back with the whitening. But Jan returned no more.



CHAPTER XXXII.

THE BAKER.—ON AND ON.—THE CHURCH BELL.—A DIGRESSION.—A FAMILIAR HYMN.—THE BOYS' HOME.

Jan stopped at last from lack of breath to go on. His feet had been winged by terror, and he looked back even now with fear to see the Cheap Jack's misshapen figure in pursuit. He had had no food for hours, but the pence the dark gentleman had given him were in his chalk pouch, and he turned into the first baker's shop he came to to buy a penny loaf. It was a small shop, served by a pleasant-faced man, who went up and down, humming, whistling, and singing, -

"Like tiny pipe of wheaten straw, The wren his little note doth swell, And every living thing that flies" -

"A penny loaf, please," said Jan, laying down the money, and the man turned and said, "Why, you be the boy that draws on the pavement!"

For a moment Jan was silent. It presented itself to him as a new difficulty, that he was likely to be recognized. There was a flour barrel by the counter, and as he pondered he began mechanically to sift the flour through his finger and thumb.

"You be used to flour seemingly," said the baker, smiling. "Was 'ee ever in a mill? 'ee seems to have a miller's thumb."

In a few minutes Jan had told his story, and had learned, with amazement and delight, that the baker had not only been a windmiller's man, but had worked in Master Lake's tower mill. He was, in fact, the man who had helped George the very night that Jan arrived. But he confirmed the fact that it was Sal who brought Jan, by his account of her, and he seemed to think that she was probably his mother. He was very kind. He refused to take payment for the loaf, and went, humming, whistling, and singing, away to get Jan some bacon to eat with it.

When he was alone, Jan's hand went back to the flour, and he sifted and thought. The baker was kind, but he had said that "it was an ackerd thing for a boy to quarrel with's parents." Jan felt that he expected him to go home. Perhaps at this moment the baker had gone, with the best intentions, to fetch the Cheap Jack, and bring about a family reunion. Terror had become an abiding state of Jan's mind, and it seized him afresh, like a palsy. He left the penny on the counter, and shook the flour-dust from his fingers, and, stealing with side glances of dread into the street, he sped away once more.

He had no knowledge of localities. He ran "on and on," as people do in fairy tales. Sometimes he rested on a doorstep, sometimes he hid in a shutter box or under an archway. He had learned to avoid the police, and he moved quickly from one dark corner to another with a hunted look in his black eyes. Late in the night he found a heap of straw near a warehouse, on which he lay down and fell asleep. At eight o'clock the next morning he was awakened by the clanging of a bell, and he jumped up in time to avoid a porter who was coming to the warehouse, and ran "on and on."

It was a bright morning, and the sun was shining; but Jan's feet were sore, and his bones ached from cold and weariness. Yesterday the struggle to escape the Cheap Jack had kept him up, but now he could only feel his utter loneliness and misery. There was not a friendly sound in all the noises of the great city,—the street cries of food he could not buy, the quarrelling, the laughter with which he had no concern, the tramp of strange feet, the roar of traffic and prosperity in which he had no part.

He was so lonely, so desolate, that when a sound came to him which was familiar and pleasant, and full of old and good and happy associations, it seemed to bring his sad life to a climax, to give just one strain too much to his powers of endurance. Like the white lights he put to his black sketches, it seemed to bring the darkness of his life into relief, and he felt as if he could bear no more, and would like to sit down and die. The sound came through the porch of a church. It was the singing of a hymn,—one of Charles Wesley's hymns, of which Master Swift was so fond.

The sooty iron gates were open, and so was the door. Jan crept in to peep, and he caught sight of a stained window full of pale faces, which seemed to beckon him, and he went into the church and no one molested him.

There is a very popular bit of what I venture to think a partly false philosophy which comes up again and again in magazines and story books in the shape of satirical contrasts between the words of the General Confession, or the Litany, and the particular materials in which the worshippers, the intercessors, and the confessing sinners happen to be clothed. But, since broadcloth has never yet been made stout enough to keep temptation from the soul, and silk has proved no protection against sorrow, I confess that I never could see any thing more incongruous in the confessions and petitions of handsomely dressed people than of ragged ones. That any sinner can be "miserable" in satin, seems impossible, or at least offensive, to some minds; perhaps to those who know least of the reckless, callous light-heartedness of the most ragged reprobates.

This has nothing to do, it seems to me, with the fact that a certain degree of outlay on dress is criminal, on several grave accounts; nor even with the incongruous spectacle of a becoming bonnet arranged during the Litany by the tightly gloved fingers of a worshipper, who would probably not be any the more devout for being uncomfortably conscious of bad clothes. An old friend of my childhood used to tell me that she always thought a good deal of her dress before going to church, that she might quite forget it when there.

Surely, dress has absolutely nothing to do with devotion. And the impertinent patronage of worshippers in "fustian" is at least as offensive as the older-fashioned vulgarity of pride in congregations who "come in their own carriages." And I do protest against the flippant inference that good clothes for the body must lower the assumptions of the spirit, or make repentance insincere; which I no more believe than that the worship of a clean Christian is less acceptable than that of a brother who cannot afford or does not value the use of soap.

I am perhaps anxious to defend this congregation, on which Jan stumbled in the pale light of early morning in the city, from any imputation on the sincerity of its worship, because it was mostly very comfortably clad. The men were chiefly business men, with a good deal of the obnoxious "broadcloth" about them, and with well- brushed hats beneath their seats. One of the stoutest and most comfortable-looking, with an intelligent face and a fair clean complexion which spoke of good food, stood near the door. He wore a new great-coat with a velvet collar, but his gray eyes (they had seen middle age, and did not shine with any flash of youthful enthusiasm) were fixed upon the window, and he sang very heartily, and by heart, -

"Other Refuge have I none! Hangs my helpless soul on Thee; Leave, ah! leave me not alone, Still support and comfort me."

The tears flowed down Jan's cheeks. It had been a favorite hymn of his foster-mother, and he had often sung it to her. Master Swift used to "give the note," and then sink himself into the bass part, and these quaint duets had been common at the mill. How delightful such simple pleasures seem to those who look back on them from the dark places of the earth, full of misery and wickedness!

In spite of his tears, Jan was fain to join as the hymn went on, and he sang like a bird, -

"All my trust on Thee is stayed, All my help from Thee I bring; Cover my defenceless head With the shadow of Thy wing."

It was the hymn after the third collect, and when it was ended the comfortable-looking gentleman motioned Jan into a seat, and he knelt down.

When the service was over, the same gentleman took him by the arm, and asked, "What's the matter with you, my boy?"

A rapid survey of his woes led Jan to reply, "I've no home, sir."

The congregation had dispersed quickly, for the men were going to business.

This gentleman walked fast, and he hurried Jan along with him.

"Who are your parents?" he asked. The service had recalled Jan's highest associations, and he was anxious to tell the strict truth.

"I don't rightly know, sir," said he.

"Are you hungry?"

"Yes, sir," sobbed poor Jan.

They were stopping before a large house, and the gentleman said, "Look here, my boy. If you had a good home, and good food, and clothes, would you work? Would you try to be a good lad, and learn an honest trade?"

"I'd be glad, sir," said Jan.

"Have you ever worked? What can you do?" asked the gentleman.

"I can mind pigs; but I do think 'twould be best for I to be in a mill, and I've got a miller's thumb." Jan said this because the idea had struck him that if he could only get home again he might hire himself out at a mop to Master Lake. A traditional belief in the force of the law of hiring made him think that this would protect him against any claim of the Cheap Jack. Before the gentleman could reply, the house-door was opened by a boy some years older than Jan, who was despatched to fetch "the master." Jan felt sure that it must be a school, though he was puzzled by the contents of the room in which they waited. It was filled with pretty specimens of joiner's and cabinet-maker's work, some quite and some partly finished. There were also brushes of various kinds, so that, if there had been a suitable window, Jan would have concluded that it was a shop. In two or three moments the master's step sounded in the passage.

Jan had pleasant associations with the word "master," and he looked up with some vague fancy of seeing a second Master Swift. Not that Master Swift, or any one else in the slow-going little village, ever walked with this sharp, hasty tread, as if one hoped to overtake time! With such a step the gentleman himself went away, when he had said to Jan, "Be a good boy, my lad, and attend to your master, and he'll be a good friend to you."

He was not in the least like Master Swift. He was young, and youthfully dressed. A schoolmaster with neither spectacles nor a black coat was a new idea to Jan; but he seemed to be kind, for, with a sharp look at Jan's pinched face, he said, "You'll be glad of some breakfast, my lad, I fancy; and breakfast's only just over. Come along." And away he went at double quick time down the passage, and Jan ran after him.

On their way to the kitchen, they crossed an open court where boys were playing, and round which ran mottoes in large letters.

"You can read?" said the master, quickly, as he caught Jan's eyes following the texts. "Have you ever been to school?"

"Yes, sir," said Jan.

"Can you write? What else have you learned?"

Jan pondered his stock of accomplishments. "I can write, sir, and cipher. And I've learned geography and history, and Master Swift gave I lessons in mechanics, and I be very fond of poetry and painting, and" -

The master was painfully familiar with the inventive and boastful powers of street boys. He pushed Jan before him into the kitchen, saying smartly, but good-humoredly, "There, there! Don't make up stories, my boy. You must learn to speak the truth, if you come into the Home. We don't expect poets and painters," he added, smiling. "If you can chop wood, and learn what you're taught, you'll do for us."

A smile stole over the face of a shrewd-looking lad who was washing dishes at the table. Jan saw that he was not believed, and his tears fell into the mug of cocoa, and on to the bread which formed his breakfast.



CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE BUSINESS MAN AND THE PAINTER.—PICTURES AND POT BOILERS.— CIMABUE AND GIOTTO.—THE SALMON-COLORED OMNIBUS.

The business men were half way to their business when the shadow of the sooty church still fell upon one or two of the congregation who dispersed more slowly; a few aged poor who lingered from infirmity as well as leisure; and a man neither very old nor very poor, whose strong limbs did not bear him away at a much quicker pace. His enjoyment of the peculiar pleasures of an early walk was deliberate as well as full, and bustle formed no necessary part of his trade. He was a painter.

The business gentleman hurrying out of the Boys' Home stumbled against the painter, whom he knew, but whom just now he would not have been sorry to avoid. The very next salmon-colored omnibus that passed the end of the street would only just enable him to be punctual if he could catch it, and the painter, in his opinion, had "no sense of the value of time." The painter, on the other hand, held as strong a conviction that his friend's sense of the monetary value of time was so exaggerated as to hinder his sense of many higher things in this beautiful world. But they were fast friends nevertheless, and with equal charity pitied each other respectively for a slovenly and a slavish way of life.

"My dear friend!" cried the artist, seizing the other by the elbow, "you are just coming from where I was thinking of going."

"By all means, my dear fellow," said Jan's friend, shaking hands to release his elbow, "the master will be delighted, and—my time is not my own, you know."

"I know well," said the artist, with a little humorous malice. "It belongs to others. That is your benevolence. So" -

"Come, come!" laughed the other. "I'm not a man of leisure like you. I must catch the next salmon-colored omnibus."

"I'll walk with you to it, and talk as we go. You can't propose to run at your time of life, and with your position in the city! Now tell me, my good friend, the boys in your Home are the offscouring of the streets, aren't they?"

"They are mostly destitute lads, but they have never been convicted of crime any more than yourself. It is the fundamental distinction between our Home and other industrial schools. Our effort is to save boys whom destitution has ALL BUT made criminal. It is not a reformatory."

"I beg your pardon, I know. But I was speaking of their bodily condition only. I want a model, and should be glad to get it without the nuisance of sketching in the slums. Such a ragged, pinched, eager, and yet stupid child as might sit homeless between the black walls of Newgate and the churchyard of St. Sepulchre,—a waif of the richest and most benevolent society in Christendom, for whom the alternative of the churchyard would be the better."

"Not the only one, I trust," said the business gentleman, almost passionately. "I trust in GOD, not the only alternative. If I have a hope, it is that of greater and more effective efforts than hitherto to rescue the children of London from crime."

In the warmth of this outburst, he had permitted a salmon-colored omnibus to escape him, but, being much too good a man of business to waste time in regrets, he placed himself at a convenient point for catching the next, and went on speaking.

"I am glad to hear you have another picture in hand."

"Not a PICTURE—a POT BOILER," said the artist, testily. "Low art— domestic sentiment—cheap pathos. My PICTURE no one would look at, even if it were finished, and if I could bring myself to part with it."

"Mind, you give me the first refusal."

"Of my PICTURE?"

"Yes, that is, I mean your street boy. It is just in my line. I delight in your things. But don't make it too pathetic, or my wife won't be able to bear it in the drawing room. Your things always make her cry."

"That's the pot boiler," said the artist; "I really wish you'd look at my picture, unfinished as it is. I should like you to have it. Anybody'll take the pot boiler. I want a model for the picture too, and, oddly enough, a boy; but one you can't provide me with."

"No? The subject you say is"—said the man of business, dreamily, as he strove at the same time to make out if a distant omnibus were yellow or salmon-colored.

"Cimabue finding the boy Giotto drawing on the sand. Ah! my friend, can one realize that meeting? Can one picture the generous glow with which the mature and courtly artist recognized unconscious genius struggling under the form of a shepherd lad,—yearning out of his great Italian eyes over that glowing landscape whose beauties could not be written in the sand? Will the golden age of the arts ever return? We are hardly moving towards it, I fear. For I have found a model for my Cimabue,—an artist too, and a true one; but no boy Giotto! Still I should like you to see it. I flatter myself the coloring" -

"Salmon," said the man of business, briskly. "I thought it was yellow. My dear fellow—HI!—take as many boys as you like—TO THE CITY!"

The conductor of the salmon-colored omnibus touched his bell, and the painter was left alone.



CHAPTER XXXIV.

A CHOICE OF VOCATIONS.—RECREATION HOUR.—THE BOW LEGGED BOY.— DRAWING BY HEART.—GIOTTO.

Jan found favor with his new friends. The master's sharp eyes noted that the prescribed ablutions seemed both pleasant and familiar to the new boy, and the superintendent of the wood-chopping department expressed his opinion that Jan's intelligence and dexterity were wasted among the fagots, and that his vocation was to be a brushmaker at least, if not a joiner.

Of such trades as were open to him in the Home Jan inclined to cabinet-making. It must be amusing to dab little bunches of bristles so deftly into little holes with hot pitch as to produce a hearth-brush, but as a life-work it does not satisfy ambition. For boot-making he felt no fancy, and the tailor's shop had a dash of corduroy and closeness in the atmosphere not grateful to nostrils so long refreshed by the breezes of the plains. But, when an elder boy led him into the airy room of the cabinet-maker, Jan found a subject of interest. The man was making a piece of furniture to order; the boys had done the rough work, and he was finishing it. It was a combination of shelves and cupboard, and was something like an old oak cabinet which stood in Master Chuter's parlor, and which, in Jan's opinion, was both handsomer and more convenient than this. When the joiner, amused by the keen gaze of Jan's black eyes, asked him good-naturedly "how he liked it," Jan expressed his opinion, to illustrate which he involuntarily took up the fat pencil lying on the bench, and made a sketch of Master Chuter's cabinet upon a bit of wood.

News spreads with mysterious swiftness in all communities, large and small. Before dinner-time, it was known throughout the Home that the master joiner had applied for the new boy as a pupil, and that he could draw with a black-lead pencil, and set his betters to rights.

The master had passed through several phases of feeling over Jan during that morning. His first impression had been dispelled by Jan's orderly ways, and the absence of any vagrant restlessness about him. The joiner's report awoke a hope that he would become a star of the institution, but as his acquirements came to the light, and he proved not merely to have a good voice, but to have been in a choir, the master's generous hopes received a check, and as the day passed on he became more and more convinced that it was a case to be "restored to his friends."

When two o'clock came, and the boys were all out for "recreation," Jan had to endure some chaff on the subject of his accomplishments. But the banter of London street boys was familiar to him, and he took it in good part. When they found him good-tempered, he was soon popular, and they asked his history with friendly curiosity.

"And vot sort of a mansion did you hang out in ven you wos at home?" inquired a little lad, whose rosy cheeks and dancing eyes would have qualified him to sit as a model for the hero of some little tale of rustic life and simplicity, but who had graduated in the lowest lore of the streets so much before he was properly able to walk that he was bandy-legged in consequence. There must have been some blood in him that was domestic and not vagrant in its currents, for he was as a rule one of the steadiest and best-behaved boys in the establishment. Only from time to time he burst out into street slang of the strongest description, apparently as a relief to his feelings. Happily for the cause it had at heart, the Boys' Home was guided by large-minded counsels, and if the eyes of the master were as the eyes of Argus, they could also wink on occasion. "Hout with it!" said the bow-legged boy, straddling before Jan. "If it wos Buckingham Palace as you resided in, make a clean breast of it, and hease your mind."

"Thee knows more of palaces than the likes of me. Thee manners be so fine," said Jan; and the repartee drew a roar of laughter, in which the bandy-legged boy joined. "But I've lived in a windmill," Jan added, "and that be more than thee've done, I fancy."

Some of the boys had seen windmills, and some had not; and there was a strong tendency among the boys who had to give exaggerated, not to say totally fictitious, descriptions of those buildings to the boys who had not. There was a quick, prevailing impression, however, that Jan's word could be trusted, and he was appealed to. "Take it off in a picter," said the bandy-legged boy. "We heered as you took off a SWEET OF FURNITUR in the Master's face. Take off the windmill, if you lived in it."

There was a bit of chalk in Jan's pocket, and the courtyard was paved. He knelt down, and the boys gathered round him. They were sharp enough to be sympathetic, and when he begged them to be quiet they kept a breathless silence, which was broken only by the distant roar of London outside, and by the Master's voice speaking in an adjoining passage.

"I can hardly say, sir, that I FEAR, but I think you'll find most of them look too hearty and comfortable for your purpose."

About Jan the silence was breathless. The bow-legged boy literally laid his hand upon his mouth, and he had better have laid it over his eyes, for they seemed in danger of falling out of their sockets.

Jan covered his for a moment, and then looked upwards. Back upon his sensitive memory rolled the past, like a returning tide which sweeps every thing before it. Much clearer than those roofs and chimney-stacks the windmill stood against the sky, with arms outstretched as if to recall its truant son. If he had needed it to draw from, it was there, plain enough. But how should he need to see it, on whose heart every line of it was written? He could have laid his hand in the dark upon the bricks that were weather-stained into fanciful landscapes upon its walls, and planted his feet on the spot where the grass was most worn down about its base.

He drew with such power and rapidity that only some awe of the look upon his face could have kept silence in the little crowd whom he had forgotten. And when the last scrap of chalk had crumbled, and he dragged his blackened finger over the foreground till it bled, the voice which broke the silence was the voice of a stranger, who stood with the master on the threshold of the court-yard.

Never perhaps was more conveyed in one word than in that which he spoke, though its meaning was known to himself alone, -

"GIOTTO!"



CHAPTER XXXV.

"WITHOUT CHARACTER?"—THE WIDOW.—THE BOW-LEGGED BOY TAKES SERVICE.- -STUDIOS AND PAINTERS.

"Manage it as you like," the artist had said to the master of the Boys' Home. "Lend him, sell him, apprentice him, give him to me,— whichever you prefer. Say I want a boot-black—a clothes-brusher—a palette-setter—a bound slave—or an adopted son, as you please. The boy I must have: in what capacity I get him is nothing to me."

"I am bound to remind you, sir," said the master, "that he was picked up in the streets, and has had no training, and earned no outfit from us. He comes to you without clothes, without character" -

"Without character?" cried the artist. "Heavens and earth! Did you ever study physiognomy? Do you know any thing of faces?"

"It is part of my duty to know something of them, sir," began the master, who was slightly nettled.

"Then don't talk nonsense, my friend, but send me the boy, as soon as is consistent with your rules and regulations."

The boy was Jan. The man of business gave his consent, but he implored his "impulsive friend," as he termed the artist, not to ruin the lad by indulgence, but to keep him in his proper place, and give him plenty to do. In conformity with this sensible advice, Jan's first duties in his new home were to clean the painter's boots when he could find them, shake his velveteen coat when the pockets were empty, sweep the studio, clean brushes, and go errands. The artist was an old bachelor, infamously cheated by the rheumatic widow he had paid to perform the domestic work of his rooms; and when this afflicted lady gave warning on being asked for hot water at a later hour than usual, Jan persuaded the artist to enforce her departure, and took her place. So heavy is the iron weight of custom—when it takes the form of an elderly and widowed domestic to a single gentleman—that even Jan's growing influence would not have secured her dismissal, had not the artist had a particular reason for wishing the boy's practical talents to be displayed. He suspected his business friend of distrusting them because of Jan's artistic genius, and he was proud to boast that he had never known the comfort of clean rooms and well-cooked food till "the boy Giotto" became his housekeeper.

The work was play to Jan after his slavery to the hunchback, and on his happiness in living with a painter it is needless to dwell. For a week or two, the artist was busy with his "pot boiler," and did not pay much attention to his new apprentice, and Jan watched without disturbing him; so that when he offered to set the painter's palette, his master regarded his success as an inspiration of genius, rather than as a result of habits of observation.

The painter, though clever and ambitious, and with a very pure and very elegant taste, was no mighty genius himself. The average of public taste in art is low enough, but in refusing his "high art" pictures, and buying his domestic ones, the public was not far wrong. It must be confessed that he had also a vein of indolence in his nature, and Jan soon painted most of the pot boilers. Another of his duties was to sit as a model for the picture. The painter sketched him again and again, and was never quite satisfied. What the vision of the windmill had lit up in the depth of his black eyes could not be recalled to order in the painter's studio.

"I tell you what it is," said the artist one day; "domestic servitude is taking the poetry out of you. You're getting fat, Giotto! Understand that from henceforth I forbid you to black boots or grates, to brush, dust, wash, cook, or whatever disturbs the peace or hinders the growth of the soul. I must get the widow back!" and the painter heaved a deep sigh.

But Jan was resolute against the widow. He effected a compromise. The bandy-legged boy from the Home was taken into the painter's service, and Jan made himself responsible for his good conduct. He began by warning his vivacious friend that no freemasonry of common street-boyhood could hinder the duty he owed to his master of protecting his property and insuring his comfort, and that he must sooner tell tales of his friend than have the painter wronged. To this homily the bandy-legged boy listened with his red cheeks artificially distended, and occasional murmurs of "Crikey!" but he took service on these terms, and did Jan no discredit. He was incorruptibly honest, and when from time to time the street fever seized him, and he left his work to play at post-leaping outside, Jan would quietly take his place, and did not betray him. This kindness invariably drew tears of penitence from the soft-hearted young vagrant, his freaks grew rarer and rarer, and he finally became as steady as he was quick-witted.

Jan's duties were now confined to the painting-room, and he soon became familiar with the studios of other artists, where his intelligent admiration of paintings which took his fancy, his modesty, his willing good-nature, and his precocious talent made him a general favorite.

He went regularly with his master to the early service in the sooty little church, in the choir of which he was finally enrolled. And the man of business kept a friendly eye on him, and gave him many a piece of sensible and very practical advice, to balance the evils of an artistic career.

With the Bohemianism of artist-life Jan was soon as familiar as with the Bohemianism of the streets. A certain old-fashioned gravity, which had always been amongst his characteristics, helped him to preserve both his dignity and modesty in a manner which gave the man of business great satisfaction. He might easily have been spoiled, but he was not. He answered respectfully to about a dozen names which the vagrant fancy of the young painters bestowed upon him: Jan-of-all-work—Jan Steen—The Flying Dutchman—Crimson Lake— Madder Lake—and Miller's Thumb.

But his master called him GIOTTO.

He was very happy, but the old home haunted him, and he longed bitterly for some news of his foster-father and the schoolmaster. Whilst the terror of the Cheap Jack was still oppressing him, he had feared to open any communication with the past, for fear the wretched couple who were supposed to be his parents should discover and reclaim him. But as his nerves recovered their tone, as the horrors of his life as a screever faded into softer tints, as that boon of poor humanity—forgetfulness—healed his wounds, and he began to go about the streets without thinking of the hunchback at every corner, he felt more and more inclined to risk any thing to know how his old friends fared. There also grew upon him a conviction that the Cheap Jack's story was false. He knew enough of art now, and of the value of his own powers, and of the struggle for livelihoods in London, to see that it had been a very good speculation to kidnap him. He had serious doubts whether the cart had been driven round by the mill, and whether Master Lake had refused to let him be awakened from his sleep, and had said it was, "All right, and he hoped the lad would do his duty to his good parents." He remembered, too, the hunchback's words when he lay speechless from the drugged liquor, and these raised a puzzling question: Why should "the nobs" recognize him? He had learned what NOBS are. Spelt without a "k," they are grand people, and what had grand people to do with Sal's son?

One cannot live without sympathy, and Jan confided the complexities of his history to the bow-legged boy, and the interest they awakened in this young gentleman could not but be gratifying to his friend. He kept one eye closed during the story, as if he saw the whole thing (TOO clearly) at a glance. He broke the thread of Jan's narrative by comments which had no obvious bearing on the facts, and, when it was ended, be gave it as his opinion that certain penny romances which he named were a joke to it.

"Oh, my! what a pity we can't employ a detective!" he said. "Whoever knowed a young projidy find his noble relations without a detective? But never mind, Jan. I knows their ways. I'm up to their dodges. Fust of all, you makes up your mind deep down in your inside, and then you says nothing to nobody, but follows it up. Fol-lows it up!"

"I don't know what to follow," said Jan; "and how can I make up my mind, when I know nothing?"

"That's just where it is," said his friend; "if you knowed every thing, wot 'ud be the use of coming the detective tip, and making it up in your inside?"

The bow-legged boy had made it up in his. He had decided that Jan was a nobleman in disguise, and that his father was a duke, or a "jook," as he called him. Jan's active imagination could not quite resist the influence of this romance, and he lay awake at night patching together the hunchback's reference to the nobs, and the incredulous glance of the dark-eyed gentleman who had given him the half pence, and who was certainly a nob himself. And never did he leave the house on an errand for the painter that the bow-legged boy did not burst forth, dish-cloth or dirty boots in hand, from some unexpected quarter, and adjure him to "look out for the jook."

It was a lovely afternoon when, by his friend's advice, Jan betook himself to the Park, that the nobs might have that opportunity of recognizing him which the wide-mouthed woman had feared. He had washed his face very clean, and brushed his old jacket with trembling hands, and the bow-legged boy had tied a spotted scarf, that had been given to himself by a stableman in the mews opposite, round Jan's neck in what he called "a gent's knot," and the poor child went to seek his fate with a beating heart.

There were nobs enough. Round and round they came, in all the monotony of a not very exhilarating amusement. The crowd was so great that the carriages crawled rather than drove, and Jan could see the people well. Many a lovely face, set in a soft frame of delicate hue, caught his artistic eye, and he watched for and recognized it again. But only a passing glance of languid curiosity met his eager gaze in return. Not a nob recognized him. But a policeman looked at him as if he did, and Jan crept away.

When he got home, he found household matters at a standstill, for the bow-legged boy had been tearfully employed in thinking how Jan would despise his old friends when the "jook" had acknowledged him, and he had become a nob. And as Jan set matters to rights, he resolved that he would not go to the Park again to look for relatives.



CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE MILLER'S LETTER.—A NEW POT BOILER SOLD.

Jan was very happy, and the brief dream of the "jook" was over, but his heart clung to his old home. If love and care, if tenderness in sickness and teaching in health, are parental qualities, why should he seek another parent than Master Swift? And had he not a foster- father to whom he was bound by all those filial ties of up-bringing from infancy, and of a common life, a common trade, and common joys and sorrows in the past, such as could bind him to no other father?

He begged a bit of paper from the painter, and wrote a letter to Master Lake, which would have done more credit to the schoolmaster's instructions had it been less blotted with tears. He besought his foster-father not to betray him to the Cheap Jack, and he inquired tenderly after the schoolmaster and Rufus.

The windmiller was no great scholar, as was shown by his reply: -

"MY DEAR JAN,

"Your welcome letter to hand, and I do hope, my dear Jan, It finds you well as it leave me at present. I be mortal bad with a cough, and your friends as searched everywhere, and dragged every place for you, encluding the plains for twenty mile round and down by the watermill. That Cheap John be no more your vather nor mine, an e'd better not show his dirty vace yearabouts after all he stole. but your poor mother, she was allus took in by him, but she said with her own mouth, that woman be no more the child's mother, and never wos a mother, and your mother knowed wots wot, poor zowl! And I'm glad, my dear Jan, you be doing well in a genteel line, though I did hope you'd take to the mill; but work is slack, and I'm not wot I wos, and I do miss Master Swift. He had a stroke after you left, and confined to the house, so I will conclude, my dear Jan, and go down and rejoice his heart to hear you be alive. I'd main like to see you, Jan, my dear, and so for sartin would he and all enquiring friends; and I am till deth your loving vather, or as good, and I shan't grudge you if so be you finds a better.

"ABEL LAKE."

"P.S. I'd main like to see your vace again, Jan, my dear."

Jan sobbed so bitterly in reading the postscript that, after vain attempts to console him by chaff, the bow-legged boy wept from sympathy.

As to the painter, the whole letter so caught his capricious fancy that he was for ever questioning Jan as to the details of his life in that out-of-the-world district where the purest breath of heaven turned the sails of the windmill, and where the miller took payment for his work "in kind."

"It must be a wonderful spot, Giotto," said he; "and, if I were richer, just now we'd go down together, and paint sunsets, and see your friends." And he walked up and down the studio, revolving his new caprice, whilst Jan tried to think if any thing were likely to bring money into his master's pocket before long. Suddenly the artist seized a sketch that was lying near, and, turning it over, began one on the other side, questioning Jan as he drew. "What do old country wives dress in down yonder?—What did you wear in the mill?—Where does the light come from in a round-house," etc.

Presently he flung it to Jan, and, in answer to the boy's cry of admiration, growled, "Ay, ay. You must do what YOU can now, for every after-touch of mine will spoil it. There are hundreds of men, Giotto, whose sketches are good, and their paintings daubs. But it is only the sketches of great men that sell. The public likes canvas and linseed oil for its money, where small reputations are concerned."

The sketch was of a peep into the round-house. Jan, toll-dish in hand, with a quaint business gravity, was met by a dame who was just raising her old back after letting down her sack of gleanings, with garrulous good-humor in her blinking eyes and withered face.

"Chiaroscuro good," dictated the painter; "execution sketchy; coloring quiet, to be in keeping with the place and subject, but pure. You know the scene better than I, so work away, Giotto. Motto—'Will ye pay or toll it, mother?' Price twenty-five guineas. Take it to What's-his-name's, and if it sells we'll go to Arcadia, Giotto mio! The very thought of those breezes is as quinine to my languid faculties!"

Jan worked hard at the new "pot boiler." The artist painted the boy's figure himself, and Jan did most of the rest. The bow-legged boy stooped in a petticoat as a model for the old woman, murmuring at intervals, "Oh, my, here IS a game!" and, when the painter had left the room, his grave speculations as to whether the withered face of the dame were a good likeness of his own chubby cheeks made Jan laugh till he could hardly hold his palette. It was done at last, and Jan took it to the picture-dealer's.

The poor boy could hardly keep out of the street where the picture- dealer lived. One afternoon, as he was hanging about the window, the business gentleman came by and asked kindly after his welfare. Jan was half ashamed of the hope with which he told the tale of the pot boiler.

"And you did some of it?" said the business gentleman, peering in through his spectacles.

"Only the painting, sir, not the design," said Jan.

"And you want very much to go and see your old home?"

"I do, sir," said Jan.

The business gentleman put his gold spectacles into their case, and laid his hand on Jan's shoulder. "I am not much of a judge of genius," said he, "but if you have it, and if you live to make a fortune by it, remember, my boy, that there is no luxury which money puts in a man's power like the luxury of helping others." With which he stepped briskly into the picture-dealer's.

And half an hour afterwards Jan burst into the painter's studio, crying, "It's sold, sir!"

"Sold!" shouted the painter, in boyish glee. "Hooray! Where's that rascal Bob? Oh, I know! I sent him for the beer. Giotto, my dear fellow, I have some shooting-boots somewhere, if you can find them, and a tourist's knapsack, and" -

But Jan had started to find the boots, and the bow-legged boy, who had overheard the news as he left the house, rushed up the street, with his head down, crying, "It's sold! it's sold!" and, as he ran, he jostled against a man in a white apron, carrying a pot of green paint to some area railings.

"Wot's sold?" said he, testily, as he recovered his balance.

"You a painter, and don't know?" said the rosy-cheeked boy. "Oh, my! Wot's sold? Why, I'm sold, and IT'S sold. That walable picter I wos about to purchase for my mansion in Piccadilly." And, feigning to burst into a torrent of tears, he darted round the corner and into the public-house.



CHAPTER XXXVII.

SUNSHINE AFTER STORM.

It had been a wet morning. The heavy rain-clouds rolled over the plains, hanging on this side above the horizon as if in an instant they must fall and crush the solid earth, and passing away on that side in dark, slanting veils of shower; giving to the vast monotony of the wide field of view that strange interchange of light and shadow, gleam and gloom, which makes the poetry of the plains.

The rain had passed. The gray mud of the chalk roads dried up into white dust almost beneath the travellers' feet as they came out again after temporary shelter; and that brightest, tenderest smile, with which, on such days, the sun makes evening atonement for his absence, shone and sparkled, danced and glowed from the windmill to the water-meads. It reopened the flowers, and drew fragrant answer from the meadow-sweet and the bay-leaved willow. It made the birds sing, and the ploughboy whistle, and the old folk toddle into their gardens to smell the herbs. It cherished silent satisfaction on the bronze face of Rufus resting on his paws, and lay over Master Swift's wan brow like the aureole of some austere saint canonized, just on this side the gates of Paradise.

The simile is not inapt, for the coarse and vigorous features of the schoolmaster had been refined to that peculiar nobleness which, perhaps, the sharp tool of suffering—used to its highest ends—can alone produce. And the smile of patience, like a victor's wreath, lay now where hot passions and imperious temper had once struggled and been overcome.

The schoolmaster was paralyzed in his lower limbs, and he sat in a wheel-chair of his own devising, which he could propel with his own hands. The agonizing anxiety and suspense which followed Jan's disappearance had broken him down, and this was the end. Rufus was still his only housekeeper, but a woman from the village came in to give him necessary help.

"And it be 'most like waiting upon a angel," said she.

This woman had gone for the night, and Master Swift sat in his invalid chair in the little porch, where he could touch the convolvulus bells with his hand, and see what some old pupil of his had done towards "righting up" the garden. It was an instance of that hardly earned grace of patience in him that he did not vex himself to see how sorely the garden suffered by his helplessness.

Not without cause was the evening smile of sunlight reflected on Master Swift's lips. Between the fingers of a hand lying on his lap lay Jan's letter to announce that he and the artist were coming to the cottage, and in intervals of reading and re-reading it the schoolmaster spouted poetry, and Rufus wagged a sedately sympathetic tail.

"How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean Are Thy returns! even as the flowers in spring; To which, besides their own demean, The late past frosts tributes of pleasure bring. Grief melts away Like snow in May, As if there were no such cold thing."

And, waving his hand after the old manner towards the glowing water- meadows, he went on with increasing emphasis: -

"Who would have thought my shrivelled heart Could have recovered greennesse?"

Perhaps Rufus felt himself bound to answer what had a tone of appeal in it, or perhaps some strange sympathy, not with Master Swift, began already to disturb him. He rose and knocked up the hand in which the letter lay with his long nose, and wandered restlessly about, and then settled down again with his eyes towards the garden- gate.

The old man sat still. The evening breeze stirred his white hair, and he drank in the scents drawn freshly from field and flowers after the rain, and they were like balm to him. As he sat up, his voice seemed to recover its old power, and he clasped his hands together over Jan's letter, and went on: -

"And now in age I bud again, After so many deaths I live and write; I once more smell the dew and rain, And relish versing: O my only Light! It cannot be That I am he On whom Thy tempests fell all night!"

So far Mr. George Herbert; but the poem was never finished, for Rufus jumped up with a cry, and after standing for a moment with stiffened limbs, and muffled whines, as if he could not believe his own glaring yellow eyes, he burst away with tenfold impetus, and dragged, and tore, and pulled, and all but carried Jan to the schoolmaster's feet.

And the painter walked away down the garden, and stood looking long over the water-meadows.



CHAPTER XXXVIII.

A PAINTER'S EDUCATION.—MASTER CHUTER'S PORT.—A FAREWELL FEAST.— THE SLEEP OF THE JUST.

"I hope, Jan," said Master Swift, "that the gentleman will overlook my want of respect towards himself, in consideration of what it was to me to see your face again."

"Don't distress me by speaking of it, Mr. Swift," said the painter, taking his hand, and sitting down beside him in the porch.

As he returned the artist's friendly grasp, the schoolmaster scanned his face with some of the old sharpness. "Sir," said he, "I beg you to forgive my freedom. I'm a rough man with a rough tongue, which I could never teach to speak the feelings of my heart; but I humbly thank you, sir, for your goodness to this boy."

"It's a very selfish kind of goodness at present, Mr. Swift, and I fancy some day the obligation of the acquaintance will be on my side."

"Jan," said the schoolmaster, "take Rufus wi' ye, and run that errand I telled ye. Rufus'll carry your basket." When they had gone, he turned earnestly to the painter.

"Sir, I'm speaking to ye out of my ignorance and my anxiety. Ye want the lad to be a painter. Will he be a great painter? I'm reminding you of what ye'll know better than me (though not by yourself, for Jan tells me you're a grand artist), that a man may have the ambition and the love, and some talent for an art, and yet be just without that divine spark which the gods withhold. Sir, GOD forbid that I should undervalue the pure pleasure of even that little gift; but it's ill for a lad when he has just that much of an art to keep him from a thrifty trade—and NO MORE."

The painter replied as earnestly as Master Swift had spoken, -

"Jan's estimate of me is weaker than his judgment in art is wont to be. I speak to understanding ears, and you will know that I have some true feeling for my art, when I tell you that I know enough to know that I shall never be a great painter; and it will help you to put confidence in my assurance that, if he lives, JAN WILL."

Deep emotion kept the old man silent. It was a mixed feeling,— first, intense pride and pleasure, and then a pang of disappointment. Had he not been the first to see genius in the child? Had he not built upon him one more ambition for himself,— the ambition of training the future great man? And now another had taken his office.

"You look disappointed," said the artist.

"It is the vile selfishness in me, sir. I had hoped the boy's gifts would have been what I could have trained at my own hearth. It is only one more wilful fancy, once more thwarted."

"Selfish I am sure it is not!" said the painter, hotly; "and as to such benevolence being thwarted as a sort of punishment for I don't know what, I believe nothing of the kind."

"You don't know, sir," said the old man, firmly. "Not that I'm speaking of the Lord's general dealings. There are tender, gentle souls, I know well, who seem only to grow the purer and better for having the desire of their eyes granted to them; but there are others whom, for their own good, the Father of all sees needful to chasten to the end."

"My experience lies in another direction," said the painter, impetuously. "With what awe do you suppose indolent men, whose easy years of self-indulgent life have been broken by no real calamity, look upon others on whose heads blow falls after blow, though their existence is an hourly struggle towards perfection? There are some stagnant pools whose peace the Angel never disturbs. Does GOD, who takes pleasure in perfecting the saint and pardoning the sinner, forget some of us because we are not worth remembering?"

"He forgets none of us, my dear sir," said the schoolmaster, "and He draws us to Himself at different times, and by different roads. I wanted to be the child's teacher, but He has chosen you, and will bless ye in the work."

The painter drove his hands through his bushy hair, and spoke more vehemently than before.

"I his teacher, and not you? My good friend, I at least am the better judge of what makes a painter's education. Is the man who shows a Giotto how to use this brush, or mix that paint, to be called his teacher? No, not for teaching him, forsooth, what he would have learned of anybody, everybody, nobody, somehow, anyhow, or done just as well without. But the man who taught him to work as a matter of principle, and apart from inclination (a lesson which not all geniuses learn); the man who fostered the love of Nature in him, and the spirit of poetry,—qualities without which draughtsmanship and painting had better not be; the man who by example and precept led him to find satisfaction in duty done, and happiness in simple pleasures and domestic affections; the man who so fixed these high and pure lessons in his mind, at its most susceptible age, that the foulest dens of London could not corrupt him; the man whose beloved and reverenced face would rise up in judgment against him if he could ever hereafter degrade his art to be a pander of vice, or a mere trick of the workshop;—this man, Master Swift, has been the painter's schoolmaster!"

Master Swift was not accustomed to betray emotion, but his nerves were less strong than they had been, and self-control was more difficult; and with his horny hands he hid the cheeks down which tears of gratified pride would force their way.

He had not found voice to speak, when Rufus appeared at the gate with one basket, followed by Jan and the little innkeeper with another. Why Master Chuter had come, and why Jan was looking so particularly well satisfied, must be explained.

Whilst the painter was still gazing across the water-meadows, Master Swift, who was the soul of hospitality, had told Jan where to find a few shillings in a certain drawer, and had commissioned him to lay these out in the wherewithal for an evening meal. Jan had had some anxiety in connection with the duty intrusted to him. Firstly, he well knew that the few shillings were what the schoolmaster must depend on for that week's living. Secondly, though it was his old friend's all, it was a sum very inadequate to provide such a meal as Jan would have liked to set before the painter. At his age, children are very sensitive on behalf of their grown-up friends, and like to maintain the credit of home. The provoking point was that Jan had plenty of pocket-money, with which he could have supplied deficiencies, had he dared; for the painter, besides buying him an outfit for the journey, had liberally rewarded him for his work at the pot boiler. But Jan knew the pride of Master Swift's heart too well to venture to add a half penny to his money, or to spend a half penny less than all.

It was whilst he was going with an anxious countenance towards the village shop that Master Chuter met him with open arms. The little innkeeper was genuinely delighted to see him; and the news of his arrival having spread, several old friends (including "Willum" Smith) were waiting for him, about the yardway of the Heart of Oak. When the innkeeper discovered Jan's errand, he insisted on packing up a prime cut of bacon, some new-laid eggs, and a bottle of "crusty" old port, such as the squires drank at election dinners, to take to the schoolmaster. Jan was far too glad of this seasonable addition to the feast to suggest doubts of its acceptance; indeed, he ventured on a hint about a possible lack of wine-glasses, which Master Chuter quickly took, and soon filled up his basket with ancient glasses on bloated legs, a clean table-cloth, and so forth.

"We needn't say any thing about the glasses," suggested Jan, as they drew near the cottage.

Master Chuter winked the little eye buried in his fat left cheek.

"I knows the schoolmaster, Jan. He be mortal proud; and I wouldn't offend he, sartinly not, Jan. But Master Swift and me have seen a deal of each other since you left, and he've tasted this port before, when he were so bad, and he'll not take it amiss from an old friend."

Master Chuter was right. The schoolmaster only thanked him heartily, and pressed him to remain. But the little innkeeper, bustling round the table with professional solicitude, declined the invitation.

"I be obliged to 'ee all the same, Master Swift. But I hope I knows better manners than to intrude on you and Jan just now, let alone a gentleman on whom I shall have pleasure in waiting at the Heart of Oak. There be beds, sir, at your service and Jan's, and well aired they be. And I'll be proud to show you the sign, sir, painted by that boy when he were an infant, as I may say. But I knowed what was in un. Master Swift can bear me witness. 'Mark my words,' says I, 'the boy Jan be 'most as good as a sign-painter yet.' And I do think a will. But you knows best, sir."

"I feel quite convinced that he will," said the painter, gravely.

Whilst Master Chuter and the artist thus settled Jan's career, he cooked the eggs and bacon; and when Master Swift had propelled himself to the table, and the others (including Rufus) had taken their seats, the innkeeper drew cork, dusted the bottle-mouth, and filled the fat-legged wine-glasses; then, throwing a parting glance over the arrangements of the table, he withdrew.

Jan's fears for the credit of his home, his anxieties as to the effect of the frugal living of his old friends upon the more luxurious taste of his new patron, were very needless. The artist was delighted with every thing, and when he said that he had never tasted food so good as the eggs and bacon, or relished any wine like that from the cellar of the Heart of Oak, he quite believed what he said. In truth, none should be so easily pleased as the artistic, when they wish to be so, since if "we receive but what we give," and our happiness in any thing is according to the mind we bring to it, imaginative people must have an advantage in being able to put so much rose color into their spectacles.

Warmed by the good cheer, Master Swift discoursed as vigorously as of old. With a graphic power of narration, commoner in his class than in a higher one, he entertained the artist with stories of Jan's childhood, and gave a vivid picture of his own first sight of him in the wood. He did not fail to describe the long blue coat, the pig-switch, and the slate, nor did he omit to quote the lines which so well described the scene which the child-genius was painting in leaves.

"Well have I named him Giotto!" said the artist; "the shepherd boy drawing on the sand."

"If ye'd seen the swineherd painting with nature's own tints," said Master Swift, with a pertinacious adherence to his own view of things, which had always been characteristic of him, "I reckon you'd have thought he beat the shepherd boy. Not that I could pretend to be a judge of the painting myself, sir; what took MY mind was the inventive energy of the child. For maybe fifty men in a hundred do a thing, if you find them the tools, and show them the way, but not five can make their own materials and find a way for themselves."

"Necessity's the mother of invention," said the painter, smiling.

"So they say, sir," said the schoolmaster, smartly; "though, from my own experience of the shiftlessness of necessitous folk, I've been tempted to doubt the truth of the proverb."

The painter laughed, and thought of the widow, as Master Swift added, "Necessity may be the MOTHER of invention, sir, but the father must have had a good head on his shoulders."

The sun had set, the moon had risen, and the dew mixed with kindred rain-drops on the schoolmaster's flowers, when Jan and the painter bade him good-by. For half an hour past it had seemed to the painter that he was exhausted, and spoke languidly.

"Don't get up till I come in the morning, Master Swift," said Jan; "I'll come early and dress you."

Rufus walked with them to the gate, and waved his tail as Jan kissed his soft nose and brow, but then he went back to Master Swift and lay down at his feet. The old man had refused to have the door shut, and he propelled his chair to the porch again, and lay looking at the stars. The moon set, and the night grew cold, so that Rufus tucked his nose deeper into his fur, but Master Swift did not close the door.

The sun was shining brightly when Jan came back in the morning. It was very early. The convolvulus bells were open, but Rufus and the schoolmaster still slept. Jan's footsteps roused Rufus, who stretched himself and yawned, but Master Swift did not move, nor answer to Jan's passionate call upon his name. And in the very peace and beauty of his countenance Jan saw that he was dead.

But at what hour the silent messenger had come—whether at midnight, or at cock-crow, or in the morning—there was none to tell.



CHAPTER XXXIX.

GEORGE AGAIN.—THE PAINTER'S ADVICE.—"HOME BREWED" AT THE HEART OF OAK.—JAN CHANGES THE PAINTER'S MIND.

Master Swift's death was a great shock to the windmiller, who was himself in frail health; and Jan gave as much time as he could to cheering his foster-father.

He had been spending an afternoon at the windmill, and the painter had been sketching the old church from the water-meadows, when they met on the little bridge near Dame Datchett's, and strolled together to the Heart of Oak. Master Chuter met them at the door.

"There be a letter for you, Jan," said he. "'Twas brought by a young varment I knows well. He belongs to them that keeps a low public at the foot of the hill, and he do be for all the world like a hudmedud, without the usefulness of un." The letter was dirty and ill-written enough to correspond to the innkeeper's account of its origin. Misspellings omitted, it ran thus: -

"MASTER JAN FORD,

"Sir,—If so be you wants to know where you come from, and where to look for them as belongs to you, come to the public at the foot of the hill this evening, with a few pounds in your pocket to open the lips of them as knows. But fair play, mind. Gearge bean't such a vool as a looks, and cart-horses won't draw it out of un, if you sets on the police. Don't you be took in by that cusnashun old rascal Cheap John. You may hold your head as high as the Squire yet, if you makes it worth the while of ONE WHO KNOWS. I always was fond of you, Jan, my dear. Keep it dark."

The painter decided to accept the invitation; but when George Sannel's face loomed out of the smoke of the dingy little kitchen, all the terrors of his childhood seemed to awake again in Jan. The face looked worn and hungry, and alarmed; but it was the face of the miller's man. In truth, he had deserted from his regiment, and was in hiding; but of this Jan and his master knew nothing.

If George's face bore some tokens of change, he seemed otherwise the same as of old. Cunning and stupidity, distrust and obstinacy, joined with unscrupulous greed, still marked his loutish attempts to overreach. Indeed, his surly temper would have brought the conference to an abrupt end but for the interference of the girl at the inn. She had written the letter for him, and seemed to take an interest in his fate which it is hardly likely that he deserved. She acted as mediator, and the artist was all the more disposed to credit her assurance that "Gearge did know a deal about the young gentleman, and should tell it all," because her appearance was so very picturesque. She did good service, when George began to pursue his old policy of mixing some lies with the truth he told, by calling him to account. Nor was she daunted by his threatening glances. "It be no manners of use thee looking at me like that, Gearge Sannel," said she, folding her arms in a defiant attitude, which the painter hastily committed to memory. "Haven't I give my word to the gentleman that he should hear a straight tale? And it be all to your advantage to tell it. You wants money, and the gentleman wants the truth. It be no mortal use to you to make up a tale, beyond annying the gentleman."

Under pressure, therefore, George told all that he knew himself, and what he had learned from the Cheap Jack's wife, and part of the purchase-money of the pot boiler was his reward.

Master Lake confirmed his account of Jan's first coming to the mill. He took the liveliest interest in his foster-son's fate, but he thought, with the artist, that there was little "satisfaction" to be got out of trying to trace Jan's real parentage. It was the painter's deliberate opinion, and he impressed it upon Jan, as they sat together in Master Chuter's parlor.

"My dear Giotto, I do hope you are not building much on hopes of a new home and new relatives. If all we have heard is true, your mother is dead; and, if your father is not dead too, he has basely deserted you. You have to make a name, not to seek one; to confer credit, not to ask for it. And I don't say this, Giotto, to make you vain, but to recall your responsibilities, and to dispel useless dreams. Believe me, my boy, your true mother, the tender nurse of your infancy, sleeps in the sacred shadow of this dear old church. It is your part to make her name, and the name of your respectable foster-father, famous as your own; to render your windmill as highly celebrated as Rembrandt's, and to hang late laurels of fame on the grave of your grand old schoolmaster. Ah! my child, I know well that the ductile artistic nature takes shape very early. The coloring of childhood stains every painter's canvas who paints from the heart. You can never call any other place home, Giotto, but this idyllic corner of the world!"

It will be seen that the painter's rose-colored spectacles were still on his nose. Every thing delighted him. He was never weary of sketching garrulous patriarchs in snowy smocks under rickety porches. He said that in an age of criticism it was quite delightful to hear Daddy Angel say, "Ay, ay," to every thing; and he waxed eloquent on the luxury of having only one post a day, and that one uncertain. But his highest flights of approbation were given to the home-brewed ale. That pure, refreshing beverage, sound and strong as a heart of oak should be, which quenched the thirst with a certain stringency which might hint at sourness to the vulgar palate, had—so he said—destroyed for ever his contentment with any other malt liquor. He spoke of Bass and Allsopp as "palatable tonics" and "non-poisonous medicinal compounds." And when, with a flourish of hyperbole, he told Master Chuter's guests that nothing to eat or drink was to be got in London, they took his word for it; and it was without suspicion of satire that Daddy Angel said, "The gen'leman do look pretty middlin' hearty too—con-sid'rin'."

It was evident that the painter had no intention of going away till the pot boiler fund was exhausted, and Jan was willing enough to abide, especially as Master Lake had caught cold at the schoolmaster's funeral, and was grateful for his foster-son's company and care. Jan was busy in many ways. He was Master Swift's heir; but the old man's illness had nearly swallowed up his savings, and Jan's legacy consisted of the books, the furniture, the gardening tools, and Rufus, who attached himself to his new master with a wistful affection which seemed to say, "You belong to the good old times, and I know you loved him."

Jan moved the schoolmaster's few chattels to the windmill, and packed the books to take to London. With them he packed the little old etching that had been bought from the Cheap Jack. "It's a very good one," said the painter. "It's by an old Dutch artist. You can see a copy in the British Museum." But it was not in the Museum that Jan first saw a duplicate of his old favorite.