He was a thing of seventeen. And men Compounded in his blood had set him here Wizened and hump-backed. But his little face Held something of the one he was to be In some eternity. He talked as freely as a child. He’d shot, he said, At a young wood-chuck. Now his gun was broke, And it’d cost a dollar and a half To mend it. Then I spoke About a little kerchief made of lace Lost on the road that day. He turned his head. “Did it have money in it, Lady?”--with quick grace Caught from some knightlier place. And when I asked him what he read He tried to rise to all my speech awoke. “A person give me a book a while ago. Oh, I donno The name--the cover’s off. I got, I guess, Two pages done. Time the stock’s fed I get so sleepy I jump into bed.” --And with this, for defence, a rueful laugh. I named the town not two miles distant. No, He hardly ever went there. Motion picture show? His eyes lit. Several times he’d been. War pictures was the best. He liked to kill? He hung his head. “No, but I never will Shoot pups or kittens when they want me to. War’s different.” School? He’d seen Four years of that--well, four years, more or less. Dad needed him--dad had so much to do. So then I faced him and his need to live. I put it plain: “But you? What do you want to do?” His answer lay within him, ready made. He met my eyes with all he had to give. “I’d like,” he said, “to learn the artist trade.” Questioned, he told me bit by little bit. He’d had a horse that died--he’d painted her. He’d painted Tige, the dog. The pigeon house. The fence that crossed the slough. The willow tree. Would he let me see? Oh, well--they wasn’t much. He couldn’t stir---- The paint right, and he didn’t have enough. All that he’d done was rough. I tried to spell his dream,--to see if his face lit At flame of it. He only said: “Mebbe I couldn’t learn.” And his eyes did not burn. (“Perhaps,” I thought, “there’s nothing here at all.”) “Dad’s going to have me paint the house,” he said. I questioned where he led. “Yellow and brown,” he answered. And my fancy’s fall He must have fathomed in my face for a slow red Mounted and swept his cheek. His eyes sought mine, His look was piteous with a kind of light. “I don’t like that. They picked it out,” he said. “I wanted white.” And all his tone was shame. The craftsman wounded in his craftsman’s right In ways he could not name.