doing battle with the sea; the sea lashing up its wave-horses till they rose high upon their haunches, their gray backs curving outward, their foamy manes a-quiver, their white forelegs madly pawing the air, till with a wild whinny they would plunge headlong upon the beach, to be pierced by the thousand rain-arrows the cloud-god sent swirling down from above, and sink backward faint and trembling to be overtaken and trampled out of sight by the next frenzied column behind.

Oh! it sent Larry’s blood tingling through his veins to see it all so plainly; and he did not feel the chill of his wet rags about him, nor the clutch of hunger in his poor, empty stomach, when the Spirit of the Storm rode out, before his very eyes, to wage his mighty war.  And then at other times it would all be quite different, and he would see the figures of beautiful maidens in gossamer garments, and they would seem to be at play, flinging flecks of sunlight this way and that, or winding and unwinding their flaky veils to fling them saucily across the face of the sun.

But none of these wondrous visions lasted.  They remained long enough to wake in Larry’s heart a great longing for more, and then they would disappear and he would be all the lonelier for the lack of them.  That was the greatest of his discouragements.  What would he care for heat or cold or hunger or thirst if he could only capture these fleeting pictures once for all, so that he could always gaze at them and dream over them and make them his forever!

That was one of the things for which Larry was wishing as he lay under the trees that summer day.  He was thinking:  “If there was only some way of getting them down from there!  It seems to me I ’d do anything in the world to be able to get them down from there.  I—.”

“No, you would n’t,” said a low voice next his ear,—­“no, you would n’t.  You ’d lie here and wish and wonder all day long, but you would n’t take the first step to bring your pictures down from heaven.”

For a moment Larry was so mightily surprised that he found himself quite at a loss for words, for there was no one near to be seen who could possibly have addressed him; but presently he gained voice to say,—­

“Oh, I know I could n’t get ’em o’ course.  Folks can’t reach up and bring clouds down out o’ de sky.”

“I did n’t say anything about clouds nor about the sky,” returned the voice.  “I was speaking about pictures and heaven.  Folks can reach up and bring pictures down out of heaven.  It’s done every day.  Geniuses do it.”

“Who is geniuses?” asked untaught Larry.

“People who can get near enough heaven to catch glimpses of its wonderful beauty and paint it on canvas or carve it in marble for the world to see, or who hear snatches of its music and set them upon paper for the world to hear; and they are called artists and sculptors and composers and poets.”

“What takes ’em up to heaven?” queried Larry.