l the drawbacks of my position.

One mild day in April, the Spring sun lay warm upon the earth, and the
wind brought from the woods the delicious scent of early flowers. I had
worked very steadily for several days in sole charge of the smithy; for
Mr. Bray had been away to visit a sister who lived some thirty miles
off. I had handed him quite large profits that morning; so I ventured to
ask for a half-holiday. It was granted, and after dinner I went up to my
room to prepare for it. I had practised in water-colors for the last few
weeks, and intended to surprise Miss Darry with a picture from Nature as
the result of the afternoon's work. So I thrust my paint-box into the
pocket of my portfolio, took a tin cup for water, and ran down stairs.

Annie was sitting on the door-step studying Gray's Botany, which at odd
moments in the winter I had attended to with her. My heart smote me for
that egotistic contemplation of myself and my prospects which had led me
to neglect her.

"Come, Annie," I said, "bring your Botany into the woods. We will find
plenty of wild-flowers there, and you shall help me, besides, to paint
my first picture."

The little face which had looked so dull a moment before brightened at
once. She gained her mother's permission, and was soon walking by my
side.

On the slope of the hill which led to the stone house where so many of
my dreams centred, we found innumerable bloodroot and anemone blossoms,
with a few buds of trailing arbutus just blushing at their edges.

Annie had a wonderful fellowship with Nature, liking even its wildest,
most uncouth forms. The snakes, with shining skin and sinuous movement,
glistening like streams of water, or lying coiled like stagnant pools
amid the rank luxuriance of grass and flowers, were as eagerly watched
by her as the most brilliant butterfly that ever fanned a blossom. She
had a faculty for tracing resemblances in the material creation, akin to
that, perhaps, which causes many to see points of likeness in faces, so
that they, as it were, carry their home about with them, and see their
friends in the new costume of every land.

Childhood and genius alike look through and over the lattice-work which
separates the regions of the natural and the supernatural. She had firm
faith in midnight revels in the woods, held by those elves, fairies, and
satyrs who come down to us from the dim and shaded life of earlier
ages, and whose existence she had eagerly accepted whe