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began to breathe heavily. Dick walked round him, pawing him, as a cat paws a soft hearth-rug. Then he traced with his forefinger the leaden pouches underneath the eyes, and shook his head. ‘You were going to steal my things, — mine, mine, mine! — you, who don’t know when you may die.
    Write a note to your office, — you say you’re the head of it, — and order them to give Torpenhow my sketches, — every one of them. Wait a minute: your hand’s shaking. Now!’ He thrust a pocket-book before him. The note was written. Torpenhow took it and departed without a word, while Dick walked round and round the spellbound captive, giving him such advice as he conceived best for the welfare of his soul. When Torpenhow returned with a gigantic portfolio, he heard Dick say, almost soothingly, ‘Now, I hope this will be a lesson to you; and if you worry me when I have settled down to work with any nonsense about actions for assault, believe me, I’ll catch you and manhandle you, and you’ll die. You haven’t very long to live, anyhow. Go! Imshi, Vootsak, — get out!’ The man departed, staggering and dazed. Dick drew a long breath: ‘Phew! what a lawless lot these people are! The first thing a poor orphan meets is gang robbery, organised burglary! Think of the hideous blackness of that man’s mind! Are my sketches all right, Torp?’
    ‘Yes; one hundred and forty-seven of them. Well, I must say, Dick, you’ve begun well.’
    ‘He was interfering with me. It only meant a few pounds to him, but it was everything to me. I don’t think he’ll bring an action. I gave him some medical advice gratis about the state of his body. It was cheap at the little flurry it cost him. Now, let’s look at my things.’
    Two minutes later Dick had thrown himself down on the floor and was deep in the portfolio, chuckling lovingly as he turned the drawings over and thought of the price at which they had been bought.
    The afternoon was well advanced when Torpenhow came to the door and saw Dick dancing a wild saraband under the skylight.
    ‘I builded better than I knew, Torp,’ he said, without stopping the dance.
    ‘They’re good! They’re damned good! They’ll go like flame! I shall have an exhibition of them on my own brazen hook. And that man would have cheated me out of it! Do you know that I’m sorry now that I didn’t actually hit him?’
    ‘Go out,’ said Torpenhow, — ’go out and pray to be delivered from the sin of arrogance, which you never will be. Bring your things up from whatever place you’re staying in, and we’ll try to make this barn a little more shipshape.’
    ‘And then — oh, then,’ said Dick, still capering, ‘we will spoil the Egyptians!’
     

CHAPTER IV
     
    The wolf-cub at even lay hid in the corn,
    When the smoke of the cooking hung gray:
    He knew where the doe made a couch for her fawn,
    And he looked to his strength for his prey.
     
    But the moon swept the smoke-wreaths away.
     
    And he turned from his meal in the villager’s close,
    And he bayed to the moon as she rose.
    — In Seonee.
     
    ‘WELL, and how does success taste?’ said Torpenhow, some three months later. He had just returned to chambers after a holiday in the country.
    ‘Good,’ said Dick, as he sat licking his lips before the easel in the studio.
    ‘I want more, — heaps more. The lean years have passed, and I approve of these fat ones.’
    ‘Be careful, old man. That way lies bad work.’
    Torpenhow was sprawling in a long chair with a small fox-terrier asleep on his chest, while Dick was preparing a canvas. A dais, a background, and a lay-figure were the only fixed objects in the place. They rose from a wreck of oddments that began with felt-covered water-bottles, belts, and regimental badges, and ended with a small bale of second-hand uniforms and a stand of mixed arms. The mark of muddy feet on the dais showed that a military model had just gone away. The watery autumn sunlight was falling, and shadows sat