‘Prices have gone up,’ said the painter, dryly.  ’And I guess living in London’s dearer now than living in Italy was when Lenbach (which he pronounced Lenback) was young!’

‘Oh! so you know all about Lenbach?’

’You lent me the article.  However’—­Fenwick rose—­’is that our bargain?’

The note in the voice was trenchant, even aggressive.  Nothing of the suppliant, in tone or attitude.  Morrison surveyed him, amused.

‘If you like to call it so,’ he said, lifting his delicate eyebrows a moment.  ‘Well, I’ll take the risk.’

He left the room.  Fenwick thrust his hands into his pockets, with a muttered exclamation, and walked to the window.  He looked out upon a Westmoreland valley in the first flush of spring; but he saw nothing.  His blood beat in heart and brain with a suffocating rapidity.  So his chance was come!  What would Phoebe say?

As he stood by the large window, face and form in strong relief against the crude green without, the energy of the May landscape was, as it were, repeated and expressed in the man beholding it.  He was tall, a little round-shouldered, with a large, broad-browed head, covered with brown, straggling hair; eyes, glancing and darkish, full of force, of excitement even, curiously veiled, often, by suspicion; nose, a little crooked owing to an injury at football; and mouth, not coarse, but large and freely cut, and falling readily into lines of sarcasm.

The general look was one of great acuteness, rather antagonistic, as a rule, than sympathetic; and the hands, which were large and yet slender, were those of a craftsman finely endowed with all the instincts of touch.

Suddenly the young man turned on his heel and looked at the water-colours on the wall.

‘The old hypocrite!’ he thought; ’they’re worth hundreds—­and I’ll be bound he got them for nothing.  He’ll try to get mine for nothing; but he’ll find I’m his match!’

For among these pictures were a number of drawings by men long since well known, and of steady repute among the dealers or in the auctions, especially of Birmingham and the northern towns.  Morrison had been for years a bank-clerk in Birmingham before his appointment to the post he now held.  A group of Midland artists, whose work had become famous, and costly in proportion, had evidently been his friends at one time—­or perhaps merely his debtors.  They were at any rate well represented on the wall of this small Westmoreland house in which he spent his holidays.

Presently Mr. Morrison was heard returning.  He placed an envelope in Fenwick’s hand, and then, pointing him to a chair at the table, he dictated a form of IOU, specifying that the debt was to be returned within a year, either in money or in the pictures agreed upon.

‘Oh, no fine speeches, please, my boy—­no fine speeches!’ said Morrison, as the artist rose, stammering out his thanks.  ’That’s been my nature all my life, I tell you—­to help the lame dogs—­ask anybody that knows me.  That’ll do; that’ll do!  Now then, what’s going to be your line of action?’