f his great protagonist.

The fellow was incredibly slovenly. His hair was reddish and bushy about
the jaw, and but for his eyes you might have mistaken him for a
commonplace tramp. Those eyes held you. They were sensitive, suffering,
terrible with the terror of a baffled spirit seeking escape and finding
none. In that coarse and bloated face they seemed pitifully out of place
and crying continually to be released. Indeed, there was something
volcanic about the man, as of lava on the boil and ready at any moment
to pour forth in destructive torrents. And surely there had been
eruptions in the past with fatal consequences.

Now he waddled toward them with an unsavoury grin.

"What luck?" he called, in a somewhat honied voice.

"We won," replied Boy briefly.

She slipped the halter over the head of the old mare, who, too lazy to
remove herself, began to graze where she stood.

The artist stood above the girl, showing his broken and dirty teeth, his
eyes devouring her.

Silver resented the familiarity of his gaze.

"Mr. Silver, this is Mr. Joses," said the girl.

The difference between the two men amused her: the one clean, keen,
beautifully appointed, like a horse got up for a show, the other shaggy
and sloppy as a farmyard beast.

"Very pleased to make your acquaintance, sir, I'm sure," grinned the
artist, bowing elaborately.

The other responded coldly.

Joses had not made a favourable impression on the young man. Boy saw
that at once; and it was not difficult to see. For Silver showed his
likes and dislikes much as Billy Bluff did.

The girl wished with all her heart that she was standing behind him that
she might see if the hair on the back of his neck had risen.

A spirit of mischief overcame her.

"Mr. Joses'll paint your horses for you," she said demurely.

"Delighted, I'm sure," laughed the artist.

"Thank you," said the young man, with a brevity the girl herself could
not have surpassed. His shyness had left him, and with it his tendency
to stammer.

Boy felt herself snubbed, and was nettled accordingly.

"I'm going home by the wood," she said.

"I'll come with you," said the artist.

The two moved away down the hill together toward the wood that thrust
like a spear into the heart of the Paddock Close.

Silver watched them with steady eyes. As usual he had been left. That
swift and slimy artist-chap had chipped in while he was thinking what
he should do.

Silver hated artists--not as