The eyes reflected in the stream were brooding, the mouth had lost its boyish curves, the sanguine cheek was thin, the jaw settling square.

His imagination, slow to quicken, had, when aroused, quite a wizard might.
He sank deeper amid the ironweed, forgot his errand, and began to dream.
He was the son of a tobacco-roller, untaught and unfriended, but he dreamed like a king.

His imagination began to paint without hands images of power upon a blank and mighty wall, and it painted like a young Michael Angelo.

It used the colours of immaturity, but it conceived with strength.

"When I am a man--" he said aloud; and again, "When I am a man--" The eyes in the pool looked at him yearningly; the leaves from the golden hickories fell upon the water and hid him from himself.