John Graham was not alone in his love for the wide reaches, level as the sea, across which every village spire could be seen for many a mile.  Not very far away, in clear weather, the great tower of Boston, not ungraceful, stood out in awe-inspiring grandeur against the sky, and was pointed out with pride and pleasure by all who loved the fens and rejoiced in the revived prosperity of their ancient capital.  For ten years John Graham had been painting pictures of these level and monotonous plains, and of the bits to be found at every village corner, but somehow, whether people had tired of them, or hesitated to give their money for an unknown artist’s work, the fortune he had dreamed of never came.  The most of the pictures found their way to the second-hand dealers, and were there sold often for the merest trifle.  He had somehow missed his mark,—­had proved himself a failure,—­and the world has not much patience or sympathy with failures.  A great calamity, such as a colossal bankruptcy, which proves the bankrupt to be more rogue than fool, arouses in it a touch of admiration, and even a curious kind of respect; but with the man out at elbows, who has striven vainly against fearful odds, though he may have kept his integrity throughout, it will have nothing to do; he will not be forgiven for having failed.

And now, when he lay dead, the victim of an ague contracted in his endeavour to catch a winter effect in a marshy hollow, there was nobody to mourn him but his motherless child.  It was very pitiful, and surely in the wide world there must have been found some compassionate heart who would have taken the child by the hand and ministered unto her for Christ’s sake.  If any such there were, Gladys had never heard of them, and did not believe they lived.  She was very old in knowledge of the world, that bitterest of all knowledge, which poverty had taught.  She had even known what it was, that gentle child, to be hungry and have nothing to eat—­a misery enhanced by the proud, sensitive spirit which was the only heritage John Graham had left the daughter for whom, most cheerfully, he would have laid down his life.  The village people had been kind after their homely way; but they, working hard all day with their hands, and eating at eventide the substantial bread of their honest toil, were possessed of a great contempt for the worn and haggard man who tramped their meadow-ways with his sketch-books under his arm, his daughter always with him, preserving still the look and manners of the gently born, though they wore the shabbiest of shabby garments, and could scarcely pay for the simple food they ate.  It was a great mystery to them, and they regarded the spectacle with the impatience of those who did not understand.