al
world as the butterflies gleamed through the outward atmosphere, and
were real to him, for the instant, without the toil, and perplexity,
and many disappointments of attempting to make them visible to the
sensual eye. Alas that the artist, whether in poetry, or whatever other
material, may not content himself with the inward enjoyment of the
beautiful, but must chase the flitting mystery beyond the verge of his
ethereal domain, and crush its frail being in seizing it with a
material grasp. Owen Warland felt the impulse to give external reality
to his ideas as irresistibly as any of the poets or painters who have
arrayed the world in a dimmer and fainter beauty, imperfectly copied
from the richness of their visions.

The night was now his time for the slow progress of re-creating the one
idea to which all his intellectual activity referred itself. Always at
the approach of dusk he stole into the town, locked himself within his
shop, and wrought with patient delicacy of touch for many hours.
Sometimes he was startled by the rap of the watchman, who, when all the
world should be asleep, had caught the gleam of lamplight through the
crevices of Owen Warland's shutters. Daylight, to the morbid
sensibility of his mind, seemed to have an intrusiveness that
interfered with his pursuits. On cloudy and inclement days, therefore,
he sat with his head upon his hands, muffling, as it were, his
sensitive brain in a mist of indefinite musings, for it was a relief to
escape from the sharp distinctness with which he was compelled to shape
out his thoughts during his nightly toil.

From one of these fits of torpor he was aroused by the entrance of
Annie Hovenden, who came into the shop with the freedom of a customer,
and also with something of the familiarity of a childish friend. She
had worn a hole through her silver thimble, and wanted Owen to repair
it.

"But I don't know whether you will condescend to such a task," said
she, laughing, "now that you are so taken up with the notion of putting
spirit into machinery."

"Where did you get that idea, Annie?" said Owen, starting in surprise.

"Oh, out of my own head," answered she, "and from something that I
heard you say, long ago, when you were but a boy and I a little child.
But come, will you mend this poor thimble of mine?"

"Anything for your sake, Annie," said Owen Warland,--"anything, even
were it to work at Robert Danforth's forge."

"And that would be a pretty sight!"