d
to make one of pasteboard. "Ten thousand thanks," said Mr. Blyth,
hooking the key to his watch-guard again, as he returned to Lady
Brambledown with his friend. "Ten thousand thanks; but the worst of it
is, I don't know where to find the pasteboard."

If, instead of turning to the right hand to speak to Mr. Gimble,
Valentine had turned to the left, he would have seen that, just as he
opened the bureau and began to search in it, Mr. Marksman finding the
way into the painting-room clear once more, had rolled himself quietly
round the door-post again; and had then, just as quietly, bent forward a
little, so as to look sideways into the bureau with those observant eyes
of his which nothing could escape, and which had been trained by his
old Indian experience to be always unscrupulously at work, watching
something. Little did Mr. Blyth think, as he walked away, talking with
Mr. Gimble, and carefully hooking his key on to its swivel again, that
Zack's strange friend had seen as much of the inside of the bureau as he
had seen of it himself.

"He shut up his big box uncommon sharp, when that smilin' little chap
come near him," thought Mat. "And yet there didn't seem nothing in it
that strangers mightn't see. There wasn't no money there--at least none
that _I_ set eyes on. Well! it's not my business. Let's have another
look at the picter."

In the affairs of art, as in other matters, important discoveries are
sometimes made, and great events occasionally accomplished, by very
ignoble agencies. Mat's deplorable ignorance of Painting in general,
and grossly illiterate misunderstanding of the subject represented by
Columbus in particular, seemed to mark him out as the last man in the
world who could possibly be associated with Art Mystic in the character
of guardian genius. Yet such was the proud position which he was
now selected by Fate to occupy. In plain words, Mr. Blyth's greatest
historical work had been for some little time in imminent danger
of destruction by falling; and Mat's "look at the picter," was the
all-important look which enabled him to be the first person in the room
who perceived that it was in peril.

The eye with which Mr. Marksman now regarded the picture was certainly
the eye of a barbarian; but the eye with which he afterwards examined
the supports by which it was suspended, was the eye of a sailor, and of
a good practical carpenter to boot. He saw directly, that one of the two
iron clamps to which th