one who happened to be in the market-place of Amiens one sunshiny summer morning in the last quarter of the twelfth century, might have seen a slim, dark, dreamy-eyed boy wandering about with teeth set in a ripe golden apricot, looking at all there was to be seen. But the chances were that no one who was there did see him, because people were very busy with their own affairs, and there was much to look at, far more important and interesting than a boy. In fact Quentin, who had come with his father, Jean of Peronne, to town that very morning, was not important to any one except his father and himself.

They had been living in a small village of Northern France, where they had a tiny farm, but when the mother died, Jean left the two older boys to take care of the fields, and with his youngest son, who was most like the mother, started out to find work elsewhere. He was a good mason, and masons were welcome anywhere. In all French cities and many towns cathedrals, castles or churches were a-building, and no one would think of building them of anything but stone.

While Quentin speculated on life as it might be in this new and interesting place, there was a shout of warning, a cry of terror from a woman near by, a dull rumble and crash, and a crowd began to gather in the street beside the cathedral. Before the boy could reach the place, a man in the garb of an Benedictine monk detached himself from the group and came toward him.

"My boy," he said kindly, "you are Quentin, from Peronne? Yes? Do not be frightened, but I must tell you that your father has been hurt. They are taking him to a house near by, and if you will come with me, I will take care of you."

The next few days were anxious ones for Quentin. His father did not die, but it was certain that he would do no more work as a mason for years, if ever. One of the older brothers came to take him home, and it was taken for granted that Quentin would go also. But the boy had a plan in his head.

There was none too much to eat at home, as it was, and it would be a long time before he was strong enough to handle stone like his father. Brother Basil, the monk who had seen his father caught under the falling wall, helped to rescue him, and taken care that he did not lose sight of his boy, had been very kind, but he did not belong in Amiens; he was on his way to Rome. Quentin met him outside the house on the day that Pierre came in from Peronne, and gave him a questioning look. He was wondering if Brother Basil would understand.

The smile that answered his look was encouraging.

"Well, my boy," said Brother Basil in his quaintly spoken French, "what is it?"

Quentin stood very straight, cap in hand. "I do not want to go home," he said slowly. "I want to stay here—and work."

"Alone?" asked the monk.

Quentin nodded. "Marc and Pierre work all day in the fields, and I am of no use there; they said so. Pierre said it again just now. I am not strong enough yet to be of use. There is work here that I can do."

He traced the outline of an ancient bit of carving on the woodwork of the overhanging doorway with one small finger. "I can do that," he said confidently.

Brother Basil's black eyebrows lifted a trifel and his mouth twitched; the boy was such a scrap of a boy. Yet he had seen enought of the oaken choir-stalls and the carved chests and the wainscoting of Amiens to know that a French wood-carver is often born with skill in his brain and his fingers, and can do things when a mere apprentice that others must be trained to do. "What have you done?" he said gravely.

"I carved a box for the mother, and whent he cousin Adele saw it she would have one too. It was made with a wreath of roses on the lid, but I would not make roses for any one but the mother; Adels's box has lilies, and a picture of herself. That she liked better."

Brother Basil was thinking. "Quentin," he said, "I know a wood-carver here, Master Gerard, who is from Peronne, and knows your talk better than I. He was a boy like you when he began to learn the work of the huchier and the wood-carver, and he might give you a place in his shop. Will your father let you stay?"

"He will if I get the chance," said Quentin. "If I ask him now, Pierre will say things."

Like many younger brothers, Quentin knew more about the older members of his family than they knew about him.

Brother Basil's smile escaped control this time. He turned and strode across the market-place to the shop of Master Gerard, beckoning Quentin to follow.

"Master," he said to the old huchier, who was planing and chipping and shaping a piece of Spanish chestnut, "here is a boy who has fallen in love with your trade."

Master Gerard glanced up in some surprise. "He like the trade, does he?" was the gruff comment he made. "Does the trade like him?"

"That is for you to say," said Brother Basil, and turning on his heel he went out, to walk up and down in the sunshine before the door and meditate on the loves of craftsmen for their crafts.

"What can you do?" asked the old man shortly, still working at his piece of chestnut.

Quentin took from his pouch a bit of wood on which he had carved, very carefully, the figure of a monk at a reading-desk with a huge volume before him. He had done it the day before after he had been with Brother Basil to bring some books from the Bishop's house, and although the figure was too small and his knife had been too clumsy to make much of a portrait of the face, he had caught exactly the intent pose of the head and the characteristic attitude of the monk's angular figure. Master Gerard frowned.

"What sort of carving is that!" he barked. "The wood is coarse and the tools were not right. You tell me you did it?"

Quentin stood his ground. "It is my work, Master," he said. "I had only this old knife, and I know the wood is not right, but it was all that I had."

"And you want to learn my trade—eh?" said the old man a little more kindly. "You have no father?"

Quentin explained. Master Gerard looked doubtful. He had met boys before who liked to whittle, and wished to work in his shop; he had apprentices whose fathers were good workmen and wished their sons to learn more than they could teach; but very seldom did he meet a boy who would work as he himself did, because the vision in his mind ran ahead of the power in his fingers. He was an old man now, but he was still seeing what might be done in wood-working if a man could only have a chance to come back, after he had spent one lifetime in learning, and use what he had learned, in the strength of a new, clear-sighted youth. He had sons of his own, but they were only good business men. They could sell the work, but they had no inspirations.

"I will let you try what you can do," he said at last, "that is, if your father is willing. Tell him to come and see me before he goes home. And look you—come back when you have told him this, and copy this work of yours in the proper fashion, with tools and wood which I will give you."

Quentin bowed, thanked the old wood-carver, walked, by a great effort, steadily out of the shop and answered a question of Brother Basil's, and then flashed like a squirrel in a hurry across the square and up the narrow winding stair in the side street where his father lodged, with the news. Pierre began two or three sentences, but never finished them. Jean of Peronne knew all about Master Gerard, and was only too glad to hear of such a chance for his motherless boy. And all the happy, sunlit afternoon Quentin sat in a corner, working away with keen-edged tools that were a joy to the hand, at a smooth-grained, close-fibered bit of wood that never splintered or split.