e of
years' hard work I ought to paint decently, and anyhow to turn out as
good things as some of those men. It is just what I have always been
wanting, though I did not know it. I am afraid I shall have to cut all
those dear old fellows, for I should never be able to give myself up to
work among them. I should say it would be best for me to go over to
Paris; I can start on a fresh groove there. At my age I should not like
to go through any of the schools here. I might have three months with
Terrier; that would be just the thing to give me a good start; he is a
good fellow but one who never earns more than bread and cheese.

"There isn't a man in our set who really knows as much about it as he
does. He has gone through our own schools, was a year at Paris, and
another at Rome. He has got the whole thing at his fingers' ends, and
would make a splendid master if he would but go in for pupils, but with
all that he can't paint a picture. He has not a spark of imagination,
nor an idea of art; he has no eye for color, or effect. He can paint
admirably what he sees, but then he sees nothing but bare facts. He is
always hard up, poor fellow, and it would be a real boon to him to take
me for three months and stick at it hard with me, and by the end of that
time I ought to be able to take my place in some artist's school in
Paris without feeling myself to be an absolute duffer among a lot of
fellows younger than myself. By Jove, this news is like a breeze on the
east coast in summer--a little sharp, perhaps, but splendidly bracing
and healthy, just the thing to set a fellow up and make a man of him. I
will go out for a walk and take the dogs with me."

He got up, went to the stables, and unchained the dogs, who leapt round
him in wild delight, for the time of late had been as dull for them as
for him; told one of the stable boys to go to the house and say that he
would not be back to lunch, and then went for a twenty mile walk over
the hills, and returned somewhat tired with the unaccustomed exertion,
but with a feeling of buoyancy and light-heartedness such as he had not
experienced for a long time past. For the next week he remained at home,
and then feeling too restless to do so any longer, went to town, telling
Mr. Brander to let him know as soon as the committee, that had already
commenced its investigations into the real state of the bank's affairs,
made their first report.

The lawyer was much puzzled over Cuthbert's man