e children observed him in silence. But some sound
must have warned him; for by and by he turned a quick, eager face, and
caught sight of them.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, scanning them rapidly up and down. "The very
thing!--that is to say"--after a second and more prolonged scrutiny--
"the boy. He just fills the bill. 'Youthful Shakespeare Mews his
Mighty Youth. The scene: Binton Bridges, beside Avon.'"

"Binton Bridges?" echoed Tilda, and walked forward to scan the
sign-board.

"I must put that down," said the artist, drawing out a notebook and
pencil. "Ignorance of Juvenile Population in respect of Immediate
Surroundings. Implied Reproach against Britain's Primary Schools."

But by this time the girl was standing under the sign-board and staring
up at it. Four figures were depicted thereon in gay colours--a king, a
priest, a soldier, and a John Bull farmer. Around them ran this
legend--

"RULE ALL,
PRAY ALL,
FIGHT ALL,
PAY ALL."

"Do you 'appen to know, sir," she asked, coming back, "if there's a
young woman employed 'ere?"

"There is," answered the artist. "I happen to know, because she won't
let me paint her, although I offered ten dollars."

"That's a good sign," said Tilda.

"Oh, is it now?" he queried, staring after her as she marched boldly
towards the house and was lost to sight between the willow-stems.

CHAPTER XVI.

ADVENTURES OF THE "FOUR ALLS" AND OF THE CELESTIAL CHEMIST

"'_Friend Sancho,' said Don Quixote, 'this Island that I promised you
can neither stir nor fly._'"--CERVANTES.

"Now what precisely did your sister mean by that?" asked the artist,
withdrawing his gaze and fixing it on Arthur Miles.

"She is not my sister," said the boy.

The artist--he was an extraordinarily tall young man, with a keen
hatchet face, restless brown eyes, and straight auburn hair parted
accurately in the middle--considered for a moment, then nodded.

"That's so. It comes out, soon as you talk . . . Well, see here now,
we'll start right away. That's how Art hits me--once I take hold of a
notion, I must sling in and get going. It's my temperament; and what's
Art--right _there_, please--what's Art, after all, but expressed
temperament? You catch the idea? You're the Infant Shakespeare, the
youth to fortune and to fame unknown--"

'His listless length at noontide would he stretch'--

"Stretch what you have of it--"

'And pore upon t