ed to make,' said Rhona Boswell.

'The photograph of Raxton Fair!' I cried. 'Frank and Winnie, and
little Bob Milford, and the seaweeds!' The terrible past came upon my
soul like an avalanche, and I leapt up and walked frantically towards
my own waggon. The picture, which was nothing but an idealisation of
the vignette upon the title-page of my father's book--the vignette
taken from the photograph of Winnie, my brother Frank, and one of my
fisher-boy playmates--brought back upon me--all!

Sinfi came to me.

'What is it, brother?' said she.

'Sinfi,' I cried, 'what was that saying of your mother's about
fathers and children?'

'My poor mammy's daddy, when she wur a little chavi, beat her so
cruel that she was a ailin' woman all her life, and she used to say,
"For good or for ill, you must dig deep to bury your daddy."'

I went back and resumed my seat by Wilderspin's side, while Sinfi
returned to Cyril.

Wilderspin evidently thought that I had been overcome by the
marvellous power of his description, and went on as though there had
been no interruption.

'Isis,' said he,' stands before you; Isis, not matronly and stern as
the mother of Horus, nor as the Isis of the licentious orgies; but
(as Philip Aylwin says) "Isis, the maiden, gazing around her, with
pure but mystic eyes."'

'And you got from my father's book,--_The Veiled Queen_, all this'--I
was going to add--'jumble of classic story and mediaeval
mysticism,'--but I stopped short in time.

'All this and more--a thousand times more than could be rendered by
the art of any painter. For the age that Carlyle spits at and the
great and good John Ruskin scorns is gross, Mr. Aylwin; the age is
grovelling and gross. No wonder, then, that Art in our time has
nothing but technical excellence; that it despises conscience,
despises aspiration, despises soul, despises even ideas--that it is
worthless, all worthless.'

'Except as practised in a certain temple of art in a certain part of
London that shall be nameless, whence Calliope, Euterpe, and all the
rhythmic sisters are banished,' interposed Cyril.

'But how did you attain to this superlative excellence, Mr.
Wilderspin?' I asked.

'That would indeed be a long story to tell,' said he. 'Yet Philip
Aylwin's son has a right to know all that I can tell. My dear friend
here knows that, though famous now, I climbed the ladder of Art from
the bottom rung; nay, before I could even reach the bottom rung, what
a toil