On the outskirts of this village was a house conspicuously superior to the rest. It was built on a slight elevation of land, and had some claim to ornament and architectural display. It was also supplied with comfortable outhouses and enclosed grounds. Back of this house, beyond the commodious barn, was a little well-worn pathway, which led through the large vegetable-garden down to what had once been an old dairy and spring-house. The spring was long since dried up, and the building would perhaps have fallen into disuse, had it not been that someone had taken possession of it and put it to a decidedly novel purpose. Almost one-half of it was occupied by a grand piano. Lying on top of this was a violin-case carefully closed, a lot of loose music, some bits of charcoal, some dilapidated paint-tubes, a very dirty palette, and other odds and ends of accumulated litter. On the walls, and scattered all about in various stages of incompleteness, were sketches in oil, water-color, and charcoal, all unmistakably bad, and yet with a quality in them that indicated that the mind had had something to express, in spite of the impotency of the hands. The room was dusty and disordered, and smelt strongly of tobacco, but the windows were open, and this odor was forced to give place, now and then, to the fresh, keen breath of the blooms of the honeysuckle vines, which hung in green density over the rickety porch without. There had been a heavy rain, and the wet sweetness was delicious. The path through the old vegetable-garden had been carefully cleared at the important period known as “garden-making time,” but now, in late summer, the weeds and grass had so encroached upon it as to make it almost as wet as the cabbage and potato patches on each side.