a dandy and made court to her, "Poor old ugly Deposit! He will grumble to the owls and the bats now!"
The door shut him out forever from all the joyous company and the palace of beauty, and the rough hands of the gardener grasped him and carried him to the edge of the garden, where the wall overlooked the public road, and there fastened him up on high with a band of iron round the trunk of a tree.
That night it rained heavily, the north wind blew, and there was thunder. Lampblack, out in the storm without his tin house to shelter him, felt that of all creatures wretched on the face of the earth there was not one so miserable as he. A sign-board! Nothing but a sign-board!
A color, created for art and artists, could not feel more grievously disgraced. Oh, how he longed for his tin tube and the quiet nook with the charcoal and the palette-knife! He had been unhappy there indeed, but he had had some sort of hope to comfort him,—some chance still remaining that one day he might be allowed to be at least the shadow of some immortal work. Now—nevermore could he be anything but what he was; change there could be none till weather and time should have done their work on him, and he be rotting on the wet earth, a shattered and worm-eaten wreck.
Day broke,—a gloomy, misty morning.
