And then the irony of fate stepped in and took a hand in Chadwick Champneys’s affairs.  The man who had hitherto been a failure, the man whose touch had seemed able to wither the most promising business sprouts, found himself suddenly possessed of the Midas touch.  He couldn’t go into anything that didn’t double in value.  He wasn’t able to fail.  Let him buy a barren bit of land in Texas, say, and oil would presently be discovered in it; or a God-forsaken tract in the West Virginia mountains, and coal would crop out; or a huddle of mean houses in some unfashionable city district, and immediately commerce and improvement strode in that direction, and what he had bought by the block he sold by the foot.

Because he was alone, and growing old, Champneys’s heart turned to his own people.  He learned that his brother’s orphaned son was still in the South Carolina town.  And there was a girl, Milly’s niece.  These two were the only human beings with whom the rich and lonely man could claim any family ties.

Peter was so breathless with interest and sympathy, so moved by the wanderings of this old Ulysses, and so altogether swept off his feet by the irruption of an uncle into his uncleless existence, that he hadn’t time for a thought as to the possible bearing it might have upon his own fortunes.  When, therefore, his uncle wound up with, “I’ll tell you, Nephew, it’s a mighty comforting thing for a man to have some one of his own blood and name close to his hand to carry on his work and fulfil his plans,” Peter came to his senses with a shock as of ice-water poured down his backbone.  He knew it wasn’t in him to carry out any business schemes his uncle might have in mind.

“Uncle Chad,” said he, honestly.  “Don’t be mistaken about me, and don’t set your heart on trying to train me into any young Napoleon of Finance.  It’s not in me.”  And he added, gently, “I’m sorry I’m a dub.  I’d like to please you, and I hate to disappoint you; but you might as well know the truth at once.”

Uncle Chad looked him up and down with shrewd eyes.

“So?” said he, and fell to pulling his long mustache.  “What’s the whole truth, Nephew?  If you don’t feel equal to learning how to run a million-dollar patent-medicine plant, what do you feel you’d be good at, hey?”

“I’m good in my own line:  I want to be an artist.  I am going to be an artist, if I have to starve to death for it!” said Peter.  He spread out his hands.  “I have one life to live, and one thing to do!” he cried.

“Oh, an artist!  I’ve never heard of any Champneys before you who had such a hankering, though I’m quite sure it’s all right, if you like it, Nephew.  There’s no earthly reason why an artist shouldn’t be a gentleman, though I could wish you’d have taken over the patent-medicine business, instead.  Have you got anything I can see?”

Shyly and reluctantly, Peter began to show him.  There were two or three oils by now; powerful sketches of country life, with its humor and pathos; heads of children and of negroes; bits of the River Swamp; all astonishingly well done.