Here for three or four years, Dick grew up, as neglected as a weed, and every inch as happy. It should be mentioned thab for the first year or so a shock-headed Cicely from tho town-farm had apparently been hired not to bake care of him. But Dick asked nothing better than to bo left to his own devices, which, moreover, were inno cent enough. He would sit all day in the lane- ut the front gate pottering with a bit of twig or a caae-knile in the soft clay. From tirna to time passers-by observed that the child wa3 nob making mud-pies, but tracing figures, comic or grotesque as might happen, and always quite wonderful for their luck of resemblance to anything human. That patch of reddieh - brown clay was hia sole resource, his slate, his drawing-book, and woe to anybody who chanced to walk over little Dick's arabesques. Patient) r.nd gentle in his acceptance of .tho world's rebuffs, this he would nob endure. Ho was afraid of Mr Shackford; yet one day, when the pre occupied man happened to trample on a nowly-cxecuted hieroglyphic, the child rose to his feet whito with rago, his fingers clenched, and such a blue fire flashing in his eyes that Mr Shackford drew back aghast.
