His father’s answer was a blow he could not understand.  At times he thought his father imagined he could get work to do in America without any trouble, and was minded to let him try it and cure himself of his radicalism by hard, cold, disenchanting experience.  That seemed the most plausible theory, yet he could not content himself with it.  A theory that pleased him better was, that this cablegram would be followed by another, of a gentler sort, requiring him to come home.  Should he write and strike his flag, and ask for a ticket home?  Oh, no, that he couldn’t ever do.  At least, not yet.  That cablegram would come, it certainly would.  So he went from one telegraph office to another every day for nearly a week, and asked if there was a cablegram for Howard Tracy.  No, there wasn’t any.  So they answered him at first.  Later, they said it before he had a chance to ask.  Later still they merely shook their heads impatiently as soon as he came in sight.  After that he was ashamed to go any more.

He was down in the lowest depths of despair, now; for the harder Barrow tried to find work for him the more hopeless the possibilities seemed to grow.  At last he said to Barrow: 

“Look here.  I want to make a confession.  I have got down, now, to where I am not only willing to acknowledge to myself that I am a shabby creature and full of false pride, but am willing to acknowledge it to you.  Well, I’ve been allowing you to wear yourself out hunting for work for me when there’s been a chance open to me all the time.  Forgive my pride—­what was left of it.  It is all gone, now, and I’ve come to confess that if those ghastly artists want another confederate, I’m their man—­for at last I am dead to shame.”

“No?  Really, can you paint?”

“Not as badly as they.  No, I don’t claim that, for I am not a genius; in fact, I am a very indifferent amateur, a slouchy dabster, a mere artistic sarcasm; but drunk or asleep I can beat those buccaneers.”

“Shake!  I want to shout!  Oh, I tell you, I am immensely delighted and relieved.  Oh, just to work—­that is life!  No matter what the work is—­ that’s of no consequence.  Just work itself is bliss when a man’s been starving for it.  I’ve been there!  Come right along; we’ll hunt the old boys up.  Don’t you feel good?  I tell you I do.”

The freebooters were not at home.  But their “works” were, displayed in profusion all about the little ratty studio.  Cannon to the right of them, cannon to the left of them, cannon in front—­it was Balaclava come again.

“Here’s the uncontented hackman, Tracy.  Buckle to—­deepen the sea-green to turf, turn the ship into a hearse.  Let the boys have a taste of your quality.”

The artists arrived just as the last touch was put on.  They stood transfixed with admiration.

“My souls but she’s a stunner, that hearse!  The hackman will just go all to pieces when he sees that won’t he Andy?”