t was interrupted by a scornful laugh from the foreman.

'A trough! and he to seek work on St. Paul's! Let him return to his
swine.'

Sir Christopher joined in the laugh. Then, seeing the crestfallen look
of the boy, he said, half-scornfully, 'Troughs! Well, then, you have
seen pigs. Suppose your carve me a sow and her little ones; that will be
in your line. Bring it me here this day week.'

He walked away, and the workmen burst into loud laughter as they hustled
Philip out of the yard.

He, poor fellow, was utterly cast down at this mocking suggestion of Sir
Christopher's, and hurrying back to his attic he flung himself on his
bed and burst into tears.

Some hours later, his landlady, a motherly old soul, who pitied the
friendless lad, toiled up the attic stairs with a basin of broth for
him, knowing that he had had no food that day.

'Highty-tighty!' she said, going up to Philip and putting a kind hand on
his shoulder. 'What's amiss? What's wrong to-day may prove right on the
morrow, so never fret, lad.'

Philip could not resist her sympathy, and she soon got from him the
story of his reception by Sir Christopher, and how the great architect
had scornfully told him to go and carve 'a sow and her little ones.'

'It was all my own fault,' continued the boy. 'I was so confused, I
never told him of the bedstead I had carved for the Hall, nor of the
mantel-shelf, but I blurted out about the trough, and then he bade me
"carve a sow,"' and Philip turned red at the remembrance.

'He said that, did he?' said the woman eagerly. 'Then do it, and show
your skill. Sir Christopher bade you come again, and he will not refuse
to see you. Set to work on the sow, and mind she is a good one.'

Encouraged by these words, Philip got up, drank the broth, and, feeling
cheered by the food, took his last crown-piece, bought a good block of
wood, and returned to his attic.

He worked at his wood block from morning to night for the next week,
hoping--aye, and praying earnestly--that he might turn out something
that the master would not despise.

It was finished at last, and pronounced by the landlady to be 'as like a
sow as one pea is like another.' So, hoping much and fearing more,
Philip took his group, carefully wrapped in an apron lent him for the
purpose, and made his way to the Cathedral yard.

'Hallo! here comes our young hedge-carpenter,' exclaimed the foreman, as
Philip passed the gate. 'What's he got so carefully wrappe