the enthralment of these studies, and in his sensuous delight in the Dantesque effects, Matt often omitted to sleep altogether. And sometimes, on that background of ruddy gloom, other visions opened out to the boy dreaming on his bed of sinuous sand; the real merged into the imaginative, and this again into the fantasies of delicious drowsihead. The walls fell away, the factory blossomed into exotic realms of romance; peerless houris, ripe in womanhood, passed over moon-silvered waters in gliding caïques; prisoned princesses, pining for love, showed dark starry eyes behind the lattice-work of verandas; pensive maidens, divinely beautiful, wandered at twilight under crescent moons rising faint and ghostly behind groves of cedars.

London, too, figured in the pageantry of his dreams, glittering like a city of the Arabian Nights, ablaze with palaces, athrob with music; and perched on the top of the tallest cupola, on the loftiest hill, stood his uncle Matthew, holding his paint-brush like a sceptre, king of the realm of Art. Hark! was that not the king's trumpeters calling, calling him to the great city, calling him to climb up and take his place. beside the sovereign? Oh, the call to his youth, the clarion call, summoning him forth to toils and triumphs in some enchanted land! Oh, the seething of the young blood that thronged the halls of dream with loveliness, and set seductive faces at the casements of sleep, and sanctified his waking reveries with prescient glimpses of a sweet spirit-woman waiting in some veiled recess of space and time to partake and inspire his consecration to Art! The narrow teachings of his childhood-the conception of a vale of tears and temptationshrivelled away like clouds melting into the illimitable blue, merging in a vast sense of the miracle of a beautiful world, a world of infinitely notable form and color. And this expansion of his horizon accomplished itself almost imperceptibly because the oppression of that ancient low-hanging heaven overbrooding earth, of that sombre heaven lying over Cobequid Village like a pall, was not upon him, and he was free to move and breathe in an independence that made existence ecstasy, even at its harshest. So that, though he walked in hunger and cold, he walked under triumphal arches of rainbows.

CHAPTER IX

ARTIST AND PURITAN

BUT the dauntless, practical youth lay beneath the dreamer, even as the Puritan lay beneath the artist. Matt could not consent to live on his host, the glass-blower, who shared his lunch with him in the middle of the night—and he was almost reduced to applying again at the paint-shop, when the captain of a schooner gave him a chance to work his way to Economy, on the basin of Minas, twenty-five miles below Cobequid Village. Matt had to make up his mind in a hurry, for this was the last ship bound north before the bay was frozen for the winter, and ships bound south for the States seemed always to have a plethora of crew. The mental conflict added to the pains of the situation; to go north again was to confess defeat. But was it not a severer defeat to lessen a poor man's lunch, even although he accepted only a minimum. on the pretext of not being hungry? This reflection decided him; though he had no prospects in Economy, and nothing to gain but a few days' food and shelter, he agreed informally to ship and to help load the schooner at nightfall. He would have preferred to go on board at once, were it only to dine off a ship's biscuit; but no one suspected his straits, and so he had an afternoon of sauntering.

On the hilly outskirts of the city he was stopped by a stylish young lady, so dazzling in dress and beauty that for a moment he did not recognize Priscilla. A fashionable crinoline, and a full-sleeved astrakhan sacque, together with an afghan muffler round her throat, had given the slim chambermaid an imposing portliness. An astrakhan toque, with a waving red feather, was set daintily on her head, and below the

sacque her gown showed magnificent with bows and airy flounces. Evidently her afternoon out.

"Good land!" she cried. "What have you been up

to?"

"Nothing. I'm in a hurry," he said, flushing shamefacedly s

he passed hastily on.

But Priscilla caught him by the hem of his jacket.

"Don't look so skairt!

this time?"

Why haven't you been to see 'ne all

"Too busy," he murmured.

"Too proud, I reckon. I thought you'd come for to look at your decorations, any ways; let's go right along there; you ain't lookin' as smart as a cricket, that's a fact; I'll make you a glass o' real nice grog to pick you up some."

He shook his head. "I'm going away-I'm off to Economy." "Scat! You want to give me the mitten. Why don't you speak straight? You don't like me."

She looked at him, half provoked, half provokingly.

He looked at her with his frank, boyish gaze; he noted the red curve of her pouting lips, the subtle light in her eyes, the warm coloring of the skin, shadowed at the neck by waves of soft brown hair, in which the beads of a chenille net glistened bluishly; he was pleasured by the brave note of the red feather against the shining black of the toque, the piquant relation of the toque to the face, and he thought how delightful it would be to transfer all these tones and shades to canvas. He forgot to answer her; he tried to store up the complex image in his memory.

"I'm glad you don't deny it," she said, her angry face belying her words.

He started. "Oh yes, I like you well enough," he said, awkwardly.

Her face softened archly. "Then why don't you come an' see me? I won't bite you!"

"I'm sorry! I'm sailing to-night."

"I guess you ain't!" She smiled imperious solicitation. "What are you goin' to do in Economy? Why don't you stick to the paint-shop?"

"I've left there way back in the summer."

What made you leave?"

"Oh, well!"

"Then you ain't got no money?" There was tender concern in her tones.

"Not hardly."

"How many meals have you had to-day?"

He had a flash of resentment. "Don't you worry about me," he said, gruffly.

"Bother!" said Priscilla, contemptuously, though her voice faltered. "You're jest goin' to come along and have a good square meal."

"No, I'm not. I'm not hungry any."

66

Oh, Matt! Where do you expect to go to?" said Priscilla, with a roguish, disarming smile.

"Not with you," rejoined Matt, smiling in response.

Priscilla laughed heartily. The white teeth gleamed roguishly against the full red lips.

"Come along," she said, with good-humored conclusiveness. He shook a smiling head. "I'm going to Economy."

"You're comin' with me; the boss 'll stand you a dinner for repairin' your decorations."

"Why, what's wrong with them?" he asked, anxiously.

He knew from his book how liable such things were to decay.

"Oh, the centre of the ceilin' is a bit off color. That silly old owl of a Cynthia spilt a pail of water on the floor above." "You don't say !" he cried, in concern.

"Honest Injun! I was jest mad. You could get lots to do if you would stay at our shanty."

I'll come and put the ceiling right," he said, indecisively; and, giving her his hand with shy awkwardness, was promenaded in triumph through the dignified streets. He felt a thrill of romance as this dazzling person clasped his hand clingingly. He wondered how she dared be seen with so shabby a being; the juxtaposition had a touch of the Arabian Nights, of the amorous adventures of his day-dreams; it was like a princess wooing a pauper. They passed other couples better matched-some in the first stage of courtship, some in the second. In the first

stage the female and the male walked apart-she near the wall talking glibly, he at the edge of the sidewalk, silent, gazing straight ahead in apparent disconnection. In the second stage the lovers walked closer together, but now both gazed straight ahead, and both were silent; only if one looked between them one saw two red hands clasped together, like the antennæ of two insects in conversation. When Priscilla and Matt met pairs in this advanced stage, her hand tightened on his, and she sidled nearer. It was like a third stage, and Matt's sense of romance was modified by a blushing shamefacedness.

As they entered the hotel Matt made instinctively towards the sitting-room to see his damaged decorations; but Priscilla, protesting that he must feed first, steered him hurriedly up-stairs into his old apartment. He was too faint with hunger to resist her stronger will.

"There, you silly boy!" she said, affectionately, depositing him in a chair before the stove, which she lighted. "Now you jest set there while I tell the boss." She lingered a moment to caress his dark hair; then, stooping down suddenly, she kissed him and fled.

Matt's heart beat violently, the blood hustled in his ears. The sense of romance grew stronger, but mingled therewith was now an uneasy, indefinable apprehension of the unknown. The magnetism of Priscilla repelled as much as it drew him; his romance was touched with vague terror. Yet as the fire vivified the bleak bedroom, with its text-ornamented walls, the warm curves of the girl's face painted themselves on the air, subtly alluring.

Priscilla herself was back soon, bearing some cold victual and some hot grog, and watched with tender satisfaction the boy's untroubled appetite. She drank a little, too, when he was done, and they clinked glasses, and Matt felt it was all very wicked and charming. Stanzas of Shelley and Byron pulsed in his memory, tropical flowers of speech blossomed in his brain.

But only weeds sprouted out. "It was real good of you, Priscilla, to speak to the boss. I'd better see to the ceiling at once."