THE STORY OF A PICTURE.

twilight at the low window looking out into the village
street.
 The child sighed, and shook her head, as she
answered, Indeed, I do not know. I cannot think
why we never see him now. He was so different from
every one else; no one seemed like him, and some-
times, Leo, he used to speak so strangely."
 "Ah! that reminds me," exclaimed the boy,
"lately, no one knew where he used to spend the
evening; he was keeping some strange secret-if I
could only think what it could have been! Did you
ever hear anything about it, Maria ?"
 She was silent.
 "Now, Maria, you want me to believe that you
know it. And," he went on, when he saw her smiling
without answering him, "you have failed for once,
because I know that if Pietro would tell it to any one,
he would tell it to me."
 "I did not say that I knew anything about it,
Leonardo."
 But you meant me to think it, my signorina," and
he laughed at what he considered his cleverness in
having found her out at the beginning of the joke.
 "But what matters it what he did or where he
went, Leo, if we could find out why we never see him
those days !"
 Many were their surmises, while they sat together
 that evening, as to his disappearance. Still daily they
 expected to meet him, and Maria never failed for
 weeks to be in the plantation at the hour of sunset
 thinking each time that she might find him in what
 he had playfully called the studio." Their father,
 who knew nothing of Pietro except by hearing him
 often spoken of in the cottage as Leonardo's favourite
 friend, told the children that doubtless he had left