ted from it all.

He had an artistic bent. From a small child he had had it, and it grew
with his years. He wanted to paint, and he painted; he wanted to sculp
in clay, and he sculped in clay; but all the time he was conscious it
was the things he had seen and the life he had lived which made his
painting and his sculpture worth while. It was absurd that a man of his
great outdoor capacity should be the slave of a temperamental quality,
and yet it was so. It was no good for his father to condemn, or his
mother to mourn, he went his own way.

He had seen much of Junia Shale in these years and had grown fond of
her, but she was away much with an aunt in the West, and she was sent
to boarding-school, and they saw each other only at intervals. She liked
him and showed it, but he was not ready to go farther. As yet his
art was everything to him, and he did not think of marriage. He was
care-free. He had a little money of his own, left by an uncle of his
mother, and he had also an allowance from his mother--none from his
father--and he was satisfied with life.

His brother, Fabian, being the elder, by five years, had gone into his
father's business as a partner, and had remained there. Fabian had at
last married an elder sister of Junia Shale and settled down in a house
on the hill, and the lumber-king, John Grier, went on building up his
splendid business.

At last, Carnac, feeling he was making small headway with his painting,
determined to go again to New York and Paris. He had already spent
a year in each place and it had benefited him greatly. So, with that
sudden decision which marked his life, he started for New York. It was
immediately after the New Year and the ground was covered with snow. He
looked out of the window of the train, and there was only the long line
of white country broken by the leafless trees and rail-fences and the
mansard-roofs and low cottages with their stoops, built up with earth
to keep them warm; and the sheds full of cattle; and here and there a
sawmill going hard, and factories pounding away and men in fur coats
driving the small Indian ponies; and the sharp calls of the men with the
sleigh bringing wood, or meat, or vegetables to market. He was by nature
a queer compound of Radical and Conservative, a victim of vision and
temperament. He was full of pride, yet fuller of humility of a real
kind. As he left Montreal he thought of Junia Shale, and he recalled the
day eleven years before wh