rom
her favorite playmate, nor did the miller even desire that extreme of
cruelty to a young lad who was guilty of nothing except poverty. But
there were many ways in which little Alois was kept away from her chosen
companion; and Nello, being a boy proud and quiet and sensitive,
was quickly wounded, and ceased to turn his own steps and those of
Patrasche, as he had been used to do with every moment of leisure, to
the old red mill upon the slope. What his offence was he did not know;
he supposed he had in some manner angered Baas Cogez by taking the
portrait of Alois in the meadow; and when the child who loved him would
run to him and nestle her hand in his, he would smile at her very sadly
and say with a tender concern for her before himself, "Nay, Alois, do
not anger your father. He thinks that I make you idle, dear, and he is
not pleased that you should be with me. He is a good man and loves you
well; we will not anger him, Alois."

But it was with a sad heart that he said it, and the earth did not look
so bright to him as it had used to do when he went out at sunrise under
the poplars down the straight roads with Patrasche. The old red mill had
been a landmark to him, and he had been used to pause by it, going and
coming, for a cheery greeting with its people as her little flaxen head
rose above the low mill wicket, and her little rosy hands had held out
a bone or a crust to Patrasche. Now the dog looked wistfully at a closed
door, and the boy went on without pausing, with a pang at his heart, and
the child sat within with tears dropping slowly on the knitting to which
she was set on her little stool by the stove; and Baas Cogez, working
among his sacks and his mill-gear, would harden his will and say to
himself, "It is best so. The lad is all but a beggar, and full of idle,
dreaming fooleries. Who knows what mischief might not come of it in the
future?" So he was wise in his generation, and would not have the door
unbarred, except upon rare and formal occasions, which seemed to have
neither warmth nor mirth in them to the two children, who had been
accustomed so long to a daily gleeful, careless, happy interchange of
greeting, speech, and pastime, with no other watcher of their sports or
auditor of their fancies than Patrasche, sagely shaking the brazen bells
of his collar and responding with all a dog's swift sympathies to their
every change of mood.

All this while the little panel of pine wood remained over the