n Warland, springing up with wonderful
energy, "as you would not drive me mad, do not touch it! The slightest
pressure of your finger would ruin me forever."

"Aha, young man! And is it so?" said the old watchmaker, looking at him
with just enough penetration to torture Owen's soul with the bitterness
of worldly criticism. "Well, take your own course; but I warn you again
that in this small piece of mechanism lives your evil spirit. Shall I
exorcise him?"

"You are my evil spirit," answered Owen, much excited,--"you and the
hard, coarse world! The leaden thoughts and the despondency that you
fling upon me are my clogs, else I should long ago have achieved the
task that I was created for."

Peter Hovenden shook his head, with the mixture of contempt and
indignation which mankind, of whom he was partly a representative, deem
themselves entitled to feel towards all simpletons who seek other
prizes than the dusty one along the highway. He then took his leave,
with an uplifted finger and a sneer upon his face that haunted the
artist's dreams for many a night afterwards. At the time of his old
master's visit, Owen was probably on the point of taking up the
relinquished task; but, by this sinister event, he was thrown back into
the state whence he had been slowly emerging.

But the innate tendency of his soul had only been accumulating fresh
vigor during its apparent sluggishness. As the summer advanced he
almost totally relinquished his business, and permitted Father Time, so
far as the old gentleman was represented by the clocks and watches
under his control, to stray at random through human life, making
infinite confusion among the train of bewildered hours. He wasted the
sunshine, as people said, in wandering through the woods and fields and
along the banks of streams. There, like a child, he found amusement in
chasing butterflies or watching the motions of water insects. There was
something truly mysterious in the intentness with which he contemplated
these living playthings as they sported on the breeze or examined the
structure of an imperial insect whom he had imprisoned. The chase of
butterflies was an apt emblem of the ideal pursuit in which he had
spent so many golden hours; but would the beautiful idea ever be
yielded to his hand like the butterfly that symbolized it? Sweet,
doubtless, were these days, and congenial to the artist's soul. They
were full of bright conceptions, which gleamed through his intellectu