s and talked mysteriously of how the
tailor's scissors had been used as a deadly weapon in the fight. But
ere long these stories died away, and the tailor, with his wife
Constanza, lived a happy, busy life, and brought up their six children
carefully and well.

Now out of those six children five were just the ordinary commonplace
little ones such as one would expect to meet in a tailor's household,
but the sixth was like the ugly duckling in the fairy tale--a little,
strange bird, unlike all the rest, who learned to swim far away and
soon left the old commonplace home behind him.

The boy's name was Andrea. He was such a quick, sharp little boy that
he was sent very early to school, and had learned to read and write
before he was seven years old. As that was considered quite enough
education, his father then took him away from school and put him to
work with a goldsmith.

It is early days to begin work at seven years old, but Andrea thought
it was quite as good as play. He was always perfectly happy if he could
have a pencil and paper, and his drawings and designs were really so
wonderfully good that his master grew to be quite proud of the child
and showed the work to all his customers.

Next door to the goldsmith's shop there lived an old artist called
Barile, who began to take a great interest in little Andrea. Barile was
not a great painter, but still there was much that he could teach the
boy, and he was anxious to have him as a pupil. So it was arranged that
Andrea should enter the studio and learn to be an artist instead of a
goldsmith.

For three years the boy worked steadily with his new master, but by
that time Barile saw that better teaching was needed than he could
give. So after much thought the old man went to the great Florentine
artist Piero di Cosimo, and asked him if he would agree to receive
Andrea as his pupil. 'You will find the boy no trouble,' he urged. 'He
has wonderful talent, and already he has learnt to mix his colours so
marvellously that to my mind there is no artist in Florence who knows
more about colour than little Andrea' Cosimo shook his head in
unbelief. The boy was but a child, and this praise seemed absurd.
However, the drawings were certainly extraordinary, and he was glad to
receive so clever a pupil.

But little by little, as Cosimo watched the boy at work, his unbelief
vanished and his wonder grew, until he was as fond and proud of his
pupil as the old master had been. 'H