“Could I see th’ picture?” asked Paul.

Rowlatt passed him the sketch-book.  The sudden sight of oneself as one appears in another’s eyes is always a shock, even to the most sophisticated sitter.  To Paul it was uncanny.  He had often seen his own reflection and was familiar with his own appearance, but this was the first time that he had looked at himself impersonally.  The sketch was vivid, the likeness excellent; the motive, the picturesque and romantic.

A proud lift of the chin, an eager glance in the eye, a sensitive curve of the lip attracted his boyish egotism.  The portrait was an ideal, something to live up to.  Involuntarily he composed his features.

Barney Bill again called time.  Paul surrendered the sketch-book reluctantly.  Rowlatt, with a cheery word, handed him the shilling fee.  Paul, than whom none better knew the magic quality of money, hesitated for a second.  The boy in the sketch would have refused.  Paul drew himself up.  “Nay, I’ll take noan.  I liked doing it.”

Rowlatt laughed and pocketed the coin.  “All right,” said he, with a playful bow.  “I’m exceedingly indebted to your courtesy.”

Barney Bill gave Paul an approving glance.  “Good for you, boy.  Never take money you’ve not earned.  Good day to you, sir”—­he touched his cap.  “And”—­with a motion toward the empty mugs—­“thank you kindly.”

Rowlatt strolled with them to the van, Barney Bill limping a pace or two ahead.  “Remember what I told you, my young friend,” said he in a low voice.  “I don’t go back upon my word.  I’ll help you.  But if you’re a wise boy and know what’s good for you, you’ll stick to Mr. Barney Bill and the freedom of the high-road and the light heart of the vagabond.  You’ll have a devilish sight more happiness in the end.”

But Paul, who already looked upon his gipsy self as dead as his Bludston self, and these dead selves as stepping-stones to higher things, turned a deaf ear to his new friend’s paradoxical philosophy.  “I’ll remember,” said he.  “Mr. W. W. Rowlatt, 4, Gray’s Inn Square.”

The young architect watched the van with its swinging, creaking excrescences lumber away down the hot and dusty road, and turned with a puzzled expression to his easel.  Joy in the Little Bear Inn had for the moment departed.  Presently he found himself scribbling a letter in pencil to his brother, the Royal Academician.

“So you see, my dear fellow,” he wrote toward the end of the epistle, “I am in a quandary.  That the little beggar is of startling beauty is undeniable.  That he has got his bill agape, like a young bird, for whatever food of beauty and emotion and knowledge comes his way is obvious to any fool.  But whether, in what I propose, I’m giving a helping hand to a kind of wild genius, or whether I’m starting a vain boy along the primrose path in the direction of everlasting bonfire, I’m damned if I know.”

But Paul jogged along by the side of Barney Bill in no such state of dubiety.  God was in His Heaven, arranging everything for his especial benefit.  All was well with the world where dazzling destinies like his were bound to be fulfilled.