e a hermit of me," I
muttered, impatiently, as I strode away in the same direction from which
I had come.

Miss Darry, Mr. Leopold, anybody, was better than Annie Bray, with her
sweet, pale face, in my present mood.

"Annie has nobody to look out for her now, you know": many a day I
remembered with a pang that this was too true.

CHAPTER. XIII.

I sold my forge and went to the city. My name appeared in the catalogue
of the fall exhibition:--"Forest Scene, by Alexander Allen." I have no
reason to suppose that the genuine merit of my picture secured for it a
place in the gallery, though doubtless some as poor by established
artists found their way there; but these having proved they could do
better could afford to be found occasionally below concert pitch.
However, Mr. Leopold commended it as highly as his conscience would
permit, and I reaped the reward; while Miss Darry gloried over its
admission as an unalloyed tribute to ability, and treasured the
catalogue more carefully than my photograph. The same course of study
and labor which I had pursued in Warren was continued in the city, with
this difference: I had not the pure air, simple food, regular life,
manual exertion, or social evenings at Hillside. Miss Darry wrote to me
regularly, but I felt wearied after her letters. There were no tender
assurances of undying affection, so soothing, doubtless, to tired brain
and heavy heart; but they read somewhat in this style:--

"MY DEAR SANDY,--Won't you begin at once a course of German
reading? 'Das Leben Jesu' of Strauss will help you
wonderfully. The old Platonic philosophers have done you
some good; but you have a faith too childlike, a complete
reliance upon Providence quite too unreasoning, for a man of
your ability. Through your own developed self you must learn
to find the Supreme Intelligence,--not to spell him out
letter by letter in every flower that grows, every trifling
event of your life. You began with belief in the old
theological riddle of the Trinity; then with perception of
the Creator in his visible world; but to your Naturalism you
must add at least a knowledge of Mysticism,
Transcendentalism,--mists which, veiling indeed the outward
creation, are interpenetrated by the sun for personal
illumination, more alluring by their veiled light, like
those sunned fogs Mr. Leopold deals with occasionally, than
the clear e