and gave it a push of vexation with the back of his hand.

Then he turned towards the door, his sunburnt face looking surly enough,
in its frame of tangled gray hair and beard; and, as he waited for the
visitor whom Melissa was greeting outside, he tossed back his big head,
and threw out his broad, deep chest, as though preparing to wrestle.

Melissa presently returned, and the youth whose hand she still held was,
as might be seen in every feature, none other than the sculptor's son.
Both were dark-eyed, with noble and splendid heads, and in stature
perfectly equal; but while the son's countenance beamed with hearty
enjoyment, and seemed by its peculiar attractiveness to be made--and to
be accustomed--to charm men and women alike, his father's face was
expressive of disgust and misanthropy. It seemed, indeed, as though the
newcomer had roused his ire, for Heron answered his son's cheerful
greeting with no word but a reproachful "At last!" and paid no heed to
the hand the youth held out to him.

Alexander was no doubt inured to such a reception; he did not disturb
himself about the old man's ill-humor, but slapped him on the shoulder
with rough geniality, went up to the work-table with easy composure, took
up the vice which held the nearly finished gem, and, after holding it to
the light and examining it carefully, exclaimed: "Well done, father! You
have done nothing better than that for a long time."

"Poor stuff!" said his father. But his son laughed.

"If you will have it so. But I will give one of my eyes to see the man in
Alexandria who can do the like!"

At this the old man broke out, and shaking his fist he cried: "Because
the man who can find anything worth doing, takes good care not to waste
his time here, making divine art a mere mockery by such trifling with
toys! By Sirius! I should like to fling all those pebbles into the fire,
the onyx and shells and jasper and what not, and smash all those wretched
tools with these fists, which were certainly made for other work than
this."

The youth laid an arm round his father's stalwart neck, and gayly
interrupted his wrath. "Oh yes, Father Heron, Philip and I have felt
often enough that they know how to hit hard."

"Not nearly often enough," growled the artist, and the young man went on:

"That I grant, though every blow from you was equal to a dozen from the
hand of any other father in Alexandria. But that those mighty fists on
human arms should have evoked