his," added he, laughing, as he laid his
vast hand beside the delicate one of Owen. "But what then? I put more
main strength into one blow of my sledge hammer than all that you have
expended since you were a 'prentice. Is not that the truth?"

"Very probably," answered the low and slender voice of Owen. "Strength
is an earthly monster. I make no pretensions to it. My force, whatever
there may be of it, is altogether spiritual."

"Well, but, Owen, what are you about?" asked his old school-fellow,
still in such a hearty volume of tone that it made the artist shrink,
especially as the question related to a subject so sacred as the
absorbing dream of his imagination. "Folks do say that you are trying
to discover the perpetual motion."

"The perpetual motion? Nonsense!" replied Owen Warland, with a movement
of disgust; for he was full of little petulances. "It can never be
discovered. It is a dream that may delude men whose brains are
mystified with matter, but not me. Besides, if such a discovery were
possible, it would not be worth my while to make it only to have the
secret turned to such purposes as are now effected by steam and water
power. I am not ambitious to be honored with the paternity of a new
kind of cotton machine."

"That would be droll enough!" cried the blacksmith, breaking out into
such an uproar of laughter that Owen himself and the bell glasses on
his work-board quivered in unison. "No, no, Owen! No child of yours
will have iron joints and sinews. Well, I won't hinder you any more.
Good night, Owen, and success, and if you need any assistance, so far
as a downright blow of hammer upon anvil will answer the purpose, I'm
your man."

And with another laugh the man of main strength left the shop.

"How strange it is," whispered Owen Warland to himself, leaning his
head upon his hand, "that all my musings, my purposes, my passion for
the beautiful, my consciousness of power to create it,--a finer, more
ethereal power, of which this earthly giant can have no
conception,--all, all, look so vain and idle whenever my path is
crossed by Robert Danforth! He would drive me mad were I to meet him
often. His hard, brute force darkens and confuses the spiritual element
within me; but I, too, will be strong in my own way. I will not yield
to him."

He took from beneath a glass a piece of minute machinery, which he set
in the condensed light of his lamp, and, looking intently at it through
a magnifying glass, pro