October Vagabonds

, but beware how you despoil me of my silence. The average noisy person can have no conception what a brutal form of trespass his coarsely

song. I locked up my hermitage, and, taking my stick, sought refuge in flight, like the other woodland creatures; only coming back at evening with cautious step and peering glance, half afraid lest it should still be there. No! It was gone,

owing notice, which I nailed up on a great elm-t

LE

sper in these woods

on no more hands of marauders invaded my peace. But I had o

ries, mandrakes, milkweed, mullein, daisies and what not-a paradise of every sauntering vine and splendid, saucy weed. In the cen

rise, I had expected to see. No common intruder this. In fact, who could have dreamed of coming upon so incongruous an apparition as this in an American woodland? How on earth did this picturesque waif from the Quartier Latin come to stray so far away from the Boul' Miche! For the little boyish figure of a man that sat sketching in my place was the Frenchiest-looking Frenchman you ever saw-with hi

red weeds. Here was a man whose whole soul was evidently-colour. There was a look in his face as if he could just eat those oranges and purples, and soft greens; and there was a sort of passionate assurance in the way in which he handled his brushes, and delicately plunged them here and there in his colo

thout looking up, and still painting, drawing

Miche, after all," I exc

sted surprise. "Ever at-?" mentioning the name of a well-

say," I

el

gain the world smelled of absinthe, and picturesque madmen gesticulated in clouds of tobacco smoke, and propounded fantastic philosophies amid the rattle of dominoes-and afar off in the street a voice was crying "Haricots verts!" My new friend's talk had the pathos of spiritual exile, f

alked, and, putting up his sketch-box, he

friend to whom I had brought the decisive news of the death of Summer, as he wa