THE STORY OF A PICTURE.

 She watched him, as, after crossing the stream, he
 walked quickly along the path through the trees, until
 he was lost to sight.
 "Ah, Leo !" said the little girl half aloud, as she
 sprang to her feet, "if you follow Pietro, may not I
 follow you ?" And, bounding across the stream whero
 it flowed narrow at her feet, she hastened along the
 path by which Leonardo had entered the plantation.
 Maria, who was about two years younger than her
 brother, was, in appearance, as unlike him as possible.
 There was nothing peculiarly handsome in his face, but
 that of Maria would be a perfect model for a painter;
 and in Castaro it was generally acknowledged that in a
 few years more her beauty would be more fitted for a
 court than a village. But though the child little by
 little had heard all this, it had not robbed her of her
 simplicity; yet the liveliness of manner, natural to her,
 had considerably increased, when she found herself
 continually sought after as a companion in play by the
 young, and loved and caressed by the old.
 "What a laugh I shall have," she thought, as she
 hurried along, "when I find Leo and Pietro talking,
 while they think I'm sitting on the bank watching the
 fishes."
 But though she glanced through every opening of
 the trees, she could see them nowhere, and, leaving
 the plantation at the further end, she stood in a broad
 green meadow, studded here and there with trees.
 At some distance to the right was a thick copse, and
 thither she directed her steps, walking slowly and
 cautiously round it when she came nearer, so that,
 should she see them, she herself might remain undis-
 covered. At the other side Pietro sat alone, his eyes
 bent on a group of elms a few paces distant, which ho
was sketching on a large flat stone, Suddenly ho