aid young Porson in the bar-parlor of
the "Coach and Horses," where Mr. Watkins was skilfully accumulating
local information on the night of his arrival.

"Very little," said Mr. Watkins; "just a snack here and there."

"Academy?"

"In course. _And_ at the Crystal Palace."

"Did they hang you well?" said Porson.

"Don't rot," said Mr. Watkins; "I don't like it."

"I mean did they put you in a good place?"

"Whatyer mean?" said Mr. Watkins suspiciously. "One 'ud think you were
trying to make out I'd been put away."

Porson was a gentlemanly young man even for an artist, and he did not
know what being "put away" meant, but he thought it best to explain
that he intended nothing of the sort. As the question of hanging seemed
a sore point with Mr. Watkins, he tried to divert the conversation a
little.

"Did you do figure work at all?"

"No, never had a head for figures," said Mr. Watkins. "My miss--Mrs.
Smith, I mean, does all that."

"She paints too!" said Porson. "That's rather jolly."

"Very," said Mr. Watkins, though he really did not think so, and,
feeling the conversation was drifting a little beyond his grasp, added:
"I came down here to paint Hammerpond House by moonlight."

"Really!" said Porson. "That's rather a novel idea."

"Yes," said Mr. Watkins, "I thought it rather a good notion when it
occurred to me. I expect to begin to-morrow night."

"What! You don't mean to paint in the open, by night?"

"I do, though."

"But how will you see your canvas?"

"Have a bloomin' cop's----" began Mr. Watkins, rising too quickly to the
question, and then realizing this, bawled to Miss Durgan for another
glass of beer. "I'm goin' to have a thing called a dark lantern," he
said to Porson.

"But it's about new moon now," objected Porson. "There won't be any
moon."

"There'll be the house," said Watkins, "at any rate. I'm goin', you see,
to paint the house first and the moon afterward."

"Oh!" said Porson, too staggered to continue the conversation.

Toward sunset next day Mr. Watkins, virgin canvas, easel, and a very
considerable case of other appliances in hand, strolled up the pleasant
pathway through the beech-woods to Hammerpond Park, and pitched his
apparatus in a strategic position commanding the house. Here he was
observed by Mr. Raphael Sant, who was returning across the park from a
study of the chalk-pits. His curiosity having been fired by Porson's
account of the new arrival, he turned aside