for you, my dear sir, to look at close?" continued
Valentine, suddenly raising his voice, and addressing himself to Mat.
"I venture to think it one of my most contentious studies from actual
nature."

While Mr. Blyth and Zack had been whispering together, Mat had walked
away from them quietly towards one end of the room, and was now standing
close to a door, lined inside with sheet iron, having bolts at top and
bottom, and leading down a flight of steps from the studio into the back
garden. Above this door hung a large chalk sketch of an old five-barred
gate, being the identical study from nature, which, as Valentine
imagined, was at that moment the special object of interest to Mat.

"No, no! don't trouble to get the sketch now," said Zack, once more
answering for his friend. "We are going out to get freshened up by a
long walk, and can't stop. Now then, Mat; what on earth are you staring
at? The garden door, or the sketch of the five-barred gate?"

"The picter, in course," answered Mat, with unusual quickness and
irritability.

"It shall be taken down for you to look at close to-night," said Mr.
Blyth, delighted by the impression which the five-barred gate seemed to
have produced on the new visitor.

On leaving Mr. Blyth's, young Thorpe and his companion turned down a
lane partially built over, which led past Valentine's back garden wall.
This was their nearest way to the fields and to the high road into the
country beyond. Before they had taken six steps down the lane, Mat, who
had been incomprehensibly stolid and taciturn inside the house, became
just as incomprehensibly curious and talkative all on a sudden outside
it.

In the first place, he insisted on mounting some planks lying under
Valentine's wall (to be used for the new houses that were being built in
the lane), and peeping over to see what sort of garden the painter had.
Zack summarily pulled him down from his elevation by the coat-tails, but
not before his quick eye had traveled over the garden; had ascended the
steps leading from it to the studio; and had risen above them as high
as the brass handle of the door by which they were approached from the
painting-room.

In the second place, when he had been prevailed on to start fairly
for the walk, Mat began to ask questions with the same pertinacious
inquisitiveness which he had already displayed on the day of the
picture-show. He set out with wanting to know whether there were to be
any strange vi