e
of each other; in spite of the difference of social standing, they
became intimates, and Mr. Mallard had at length some one with whom he
found pleasure in conversing. He did not long enjoy the new experience.
In the winter that followed, he died of a cold contracted on one of his
walks when the hills were deep in snow.

Doran remained the firm friend of the family. Local talk had inspired
Mrs. Mallard with a prejudice against him, but substantial services
mitigated this, and the widow was in course of time less uneasy at her
son's being practically under the guardianship of this singular man of
business. Mallard, after preliminary training, was sent to the studio
of a young artist whom Doran greatly admired, Cullen Banks, then
struggling for the recognition he was never to enjoy, death being
beforehand with him. Mrs. Mallard was given to understand that no
expenses were involved save those of the lad's support in Manchester,
where Banks lived, and Mallard himself did not till long after know
that his friend had paid the artist a fee out of his own pocket. Two
things did Mallard learn from Doran himself which were to have a marked
influence on his life--a belief that only in landscape can a painter of
our time hope to do really great work, and a limitless contempt of the
Royal Academy. In Manchester he made the acquaintance of several people
with whom Doran was familiar, among them Edward Spence, then in the
shipping-office, and Jacob Bush Bradshaw, well on his way to making a
fortune out of silk. On Banks's death, Mallard, now nearly twenty-one,
went to London for a time. His patrimony was modest, but happily, if
the capital remained intact, sufficient to save him from the cares that
degrade and waste a life. His mother and sisters had also an income
adequate to their simple habits.

In the meantime, Mrs. Doran was dead. After giving birth to a daughter,
she fell into miserable health; her husband took her abroad, and she
died in Germany. Thereafter Sowerby Bridge saw no more of its bugbear;
Doran abandoned commerce and became a Bohemian in earnest--save that
his dinner was always assured. He wandered over Europe; he lived with
Bohemian society in every capital; he kept adding to his collection of
pictures (stored in a house at Woolwich, which he freely lent as an
abode to a succession of ill-to-do artists); and finally he was struck
with paralysis whilst conducting to their home the widow and child of a
young paint