A DOG OF FLANDERS. 73

his youth, and had brought nothing
back, deemed in his old age that to
live and die on one spot in contented
humility was the fairest fate he could
desire for his darling. But Nello
said nothing.

The same leaven was working in
him that in other times begat Ru-
bens and Jordaens and the Van Eycks,
and all their wondrous tribe, and in
times more recent begat in the
green country of the Ardennes,
where the Meuse washes the old
walls of Dijon, the great artist of.
the Patroclus, whose genius is too:
near us for us aright to measure
its divinity.

Nello dreamed of other things in
the future than of tilling the little