ing
more darkly than ever.

CHAPTER VI
FLITTING

Once more they moved suddenly, and the second flitting came about in
this way:

Alora stood beside the easel one morning, watching her father work on
his picture. Not that she was especially interested in him or the
picture, but there was nothing else for her to do. She stood with her
slim legs apart, her hands clasped behind her, staring rather vacantly,
when he looked up and noted her presence.

"Well, what do you think of it?" he asked rather sharply.

"Of the picture?" said Lory.

"Of course."

"I don't like it," she asserted, with childish frankness.

"Eh? You don't like it? Why not, girl?"

"Well," she replied, her eyes narrowing critically, "that cow's horn
isn't on straight--the red cow's left horn. And it's the same size, all
the way up."

He laid down his palette and brush and gazed at his picture for a long
time. The scowl came on his face again. Usually his face was stolid and
expressionless, but Alora had begun to observe that whenever anything
irritated or disturbed him he scowled, and the measure of the scowl
indicated to what extent he was annoyed. When he scowled at his own
unfinished picture Lory decided he was honest enough to agree with her
criticism of it.

Finally the artist took a claspknife from his pocket, opened the blade
and deliberately slashed the picture from top to bottom, this way and
that, until it was a mere mass of shreds. Then he kicked the stretcher
into a corner and brought out another picture, which he placed on the
easel.

"Well, how about that?" he asked, looking hard at it himself.

Alora was somewhat frightened at having caused the destruction of the
cow picture. So she hesitated before replying: "I--I'd rather not say."

"How funny!" he said musingly, "but until now I never realized how
stiff and unreal the daub is. Shall I finish it, Alora?"

"I think so, sir," she answered.

Again the knife slashed through the canvas and the remains joined the
scrap-heap in the corner.

Jason Jones was not scowling any more. Instead, there was a hint of a
humorous expression on his usually dull features. Only pausing to light
his pipe, he brought out one after another of his canvases and after a
critical look destroyed each and every one.

Lory was perplexed at the mad act, for although her judgment told her
they were not worth keeping, she realized that her father must have
passed many laborious hours on them. Bu