Much of his leisure was spent at Master Swift’s cottage, and in reading his books. The schoolmaster had marked an old biographical dictionary at pages containing lives of “self-made” men, who had risen as inventors or improvers in mechanics or as discoverers of important facts of natural science. Jan had not hitherto studied their careers with the avidity Master Swift would have liked to see, but one day he found him reading the fat volume with deep interest. “And whose life are ye at now, laddie?” he asked, with a smile. Jan lifted his face, which was glowing. “’Tis Rembrandt the painter I be reading about. Eh, Master Swift, he lived in a windmill, and he was a miller’s son!” “Maybe he’d a miller’s thumb,” Jan added, stretching out his own, and smiling at the droll idea. “Do ’ee know what _etchings_ be, then, Master Swift?” “A kind of picture that’s scratched on a piece of copper with needles, and costs a lot of money to print,” said Master Swift, dryly; and he turned his broad back and went out. It was one day in the second winter of Jan’s learning under Master Swift that matters came to a climax. The schoolmaster loved punctuality, but Jan was not always punctual. He was generally better in this respect in winter than in summer, as there was less to distract his attention on the road to school. But one winter’s day he loitered to make a sketch on his slate, and made matters worse by putting finishing touches to it after he was seated at the desk. It was not a day to suggest sketching, but, turning round when he was about half way to the village, the view seemed to Jan to be exactly suitable for a slate sketch. The long slopes of the downs were white with snow; but it was a dull grayish white, for there was no sunshine, and the gray-white of the slate-pencil did it justice enough. In the middle distance rose the windmill, and a thatched cattle shed and some palings made an admirable foreground. On the top and edges of these lay the snow, outlining them in white, which again the slate-pencil could imitate effectively. There only wanted something darker than the slate itself to do those parts of the foreground and the mill which looked darker than the sky, and for this Jan trusted to pen and ink when he reached his desk. The drawing was very successful, and Jan was so absorbed in admiring it that he did not notice the schoolmaster’s approach, but feeling some one behind him, he fancied it was one of the boys, and held up the slate triumphantly, whispering, “Look ’ee here!”