The Artist in the Pines

He steps into view on a day so warm that the pines ooze resin and the forest is thick with its vapors -- a scraggly-bearded drifter, oddly dressed and toting canvas rolls in a quiver. When he stops at a cabin to sketch, it seems an unpromising intrusion -- the man there has recently lost his wife, and the boy his mother. But the drifter has a way with the child and brings an eerie sort of talent to the easel. As he camps in the yard a treasure of fantastical paintings begins to fill the household.