“Boys, that Shackford is what I call a born genei.”

After all, is not the one-eyed man who is king among the blind the most fortunate of monarchs?  Your little talent in a provincial village looms a great deal taller than your mighty genius in a city.  Richard Whackford working for Rowland Slocum at Stillwater was happier than Michaelangelo in Rome with Pope Julius II. at his back.  And Richard was the better paid, too!

One day he picked up a useful hint from a celebrated sculptor, who had come to the village in search of marble for the base of a soldiers’ monument.  Richard was laboriously copying a spray of fern, the delicacy of which eluded his pencil.  The sculptor stood a moment silently observing him.

“Why do you spend an hour doing only passably well what you could do perfectly in ten minutes?”

“I suppose it is because I am stupid, sir,” said Richard.

“No stupid man ever suspected himself of being anything but clever.  You can draw capitally; but nature beats you out and out at designing ferns.  Just ask her to make you a fac-simile in plaster, and see how handily she will lend herself to the job.  Of course you must help her a little.”

“Oh, I am not above giving nature a lift,” said Richard modestly.

“Lay a cloth on your table, place the fern on the cloth, and pour a thin paste of plaster of Paris over the leaf,—­do that gently, so as not to disarrange the spray.  When the plaster is set, there’s your mold; remove the leave, oil the matrix, and pour in fresh plaster.  When that is set, cut away tdhe mold carefully, and there’s your spray of fern, as graceful and perfect as if nature had done it all by herself.  You get the very texture of the leaf by this process.”

After that, Richard made casts instead of drawings for the carvers, and fancied he was doing a new thing, until he visited some marble-works in the great city.

At this period, whatever change subsequently took place in his feeling, Richard was desirous of establishing friendly relations with his cousin.  The young fellow’s sense of kinship was singularly strong, and it was only after several repulses at the door of the Shackford house and on the street that he relinquished the hope of placating the sour old man.  At times Richard was moved almost to pity him.  Every day Mr. Shackford seemed to grow shabbier and more spectral.  He was a grotesque figure now, in his napless hat and broken-down stock.  The metal button-holes on his ancient waistcoat had worn their way through the satin coverings, leaving here and there a sparse fringe around the edges, and somehow suggesting little bald heads.  Looking at him, you felt that the inner man was as threadbare and dilapidated as his outside; but in his lonely old age he asked for no human sympathy or companionship, and, in fact, stood in no need of either.  With one devouring passion he set the world at defiance.  He loved his gold,—­the