and illuminating disquisition on baroque art, had turned a wandering eye about the room and asked him abruptly whether he liked parrots. He had flushed and glanced suspiciously toward him, fancying that the man was trying to be offensive. But no; Badgery's white, fleshy Hanoverian face wore an expression of perfect good faith. There

was no malice in his small greenish eyes. He evidently did genuinely want to know if Spode liked parrots. The young man swallowed his irritation and replied that he did. Badgery then told a good story about parrots. Spode was on the point of capping it with a better story when his host began to talk about Beethoven. So the game went on. Spode cut his conversation to suit his host's requirements. In the course of ten minutes he had made a more or less witty epigram on Benvenuto Cellini, Queen Victoria, sport, God, Stephen Phillips, and Moorish architecture. Lord Badgery thought him a most charming young man and intelligent.

"If you've quite finished your coffee," he said, rising to his feet as he spoke, "we 'll go and look at the pictures."

Spode jumped up with alacrity, and only then realized that he had drunk just ever so little too much. He would have to be careful, talk deliberately, plant his feet consciously one after the other.

"This house is quite cluttered up with pictures," Lord Badgery complained. "I had a whole wagon-load taken away to the country last week, but there are still far too many. My ancestors would have their portraits painted by Romney. Such a shocking artist, don't you think? Why could n't they have chosen Gainsborough or even Reynolds? I've had all the Romneys hung in the servants' hall now. It 's such a comfort to know that one can never possibly see them again. I suppose you know all about the ancient Hittites."

"Well-" the young man replied, with befitting modesty.

"Look at that, then." He indicated a large stone head which stood in a case near the dining-room door. "It 's not Greek or Egyptian or Persian or anything else; so, if it is n't ancient Hittite, I don't know what it is. And that

reminds me of that story about Lord George Sanger, the Circus King-" Without giving Spode time to examine the Hittite relic, he led the way up the huge staircase, pausing every now and then in his anecdote to point out some new object of curiosity or beauty.

"I suppose you know Deburau's pantomimes?" Spode rapped out as soon as the story was over. He was in an itch to let out his information about Deburau. Badgery had given him a perfect opening with his ridiculous Sanger. "What a perfect man, is n't he? Henx used to-"

"This is my main gallery," said Lord Badgery, throwing open one leaf of a tall folding-door. "I must apologize for it. It looks like a roller-skating rink." He fumbled with the electric switches, and there was suddenly light,-light that revealed an enormous gallery, duly receding into distance according to all the laws of perspective. "I dare say you 've heard of my poor father," Lord Badgery continued. "A little insane, you know; sort of mechanical genius with a screw loose. He used to have a toy railway in this room. No end of fun he had, crawling about the floor after his trains. And all the pictures were stacked in the cellars. I can't tell you what they were like when I found them, mushrooms growing out of the Botticellis. Now, I 'm rather proud of this Poussin; he painted it for Scarron."

"Exquisite!" Spode exclaimed, making with his hand a gesture as though he were modeling a pure form in the air. "How splendid the onrush of those trees and leaning figures is! And the way they 're caught up, as it were, and stemmed by that single god-like form opposing them with his contrary movement! And the draperies-"

But Lord Badgery had moved on, and was standing in front of a little fifteenth century Virgin of carved wood.

"School of Rheims," he explained. They "did" the gallery at high speed. Badgery never permitted his guest to halt for more than forty seconds before any work of art. Spode would have liked to spend a few moments of recollection and tranquillity in front of some of these lovely things, but it was not permitted.

The gallery done, they passed into a little room leading out of it. At the sight of what the lights revealed Spode gasped.

"It 's like something out of Balzac," he exclaimed. "Un de ces salons dorés où deploie un luxe insolent. You know."

"My nineteenth-century chamber," Badgery explained. "The best thing of its kind, I flatter myself, outside the state apartments at Windsor."

Spode tiptoed round the room, peering with astonishment at all the objects in glass, in gilded bronze, in china, in feathers, in embroidered and painted silk, in beads, in wax, objects of the most fantastic shapes and colors, all, the queer products of a decadent tradition, with which the room was crowded. There were paintings on the walls: a Martin, a Wilkie, an early Landseer, several Etties, a big Haydon, a slight pretty water-color of a girl by Wainewright, the pupil of Blake and arsenic poisoner, and a score of others. But the picture which arrested Spode's attention was a medium-sized canvas representing Troilus riding into Troy among the

flowers and plaudits of an admiring crowd and oblivious, you could see from his expression, of everything but the eyes of Cressida, who looks down at him from a window, with Pandarus smiling over her shoulder.

"What an absurd and enchanting picture!" Spode exclaimed.

"Ah, you 've spotted my Troilus." Lord Badgery was pleased.

"What bright, harmonious colors! Like Ettie's, only stronger, not so obviously pretty. And there's an energy about it that reminds one of Haydon. Only Haydon could never have done anything so impeccable in taste. Who is it by?" Spode turned to his host inquiringly.

"You were right in detecting Haydon," Lord Badgery answered.

"It 's by his pupil, Tillotson. I wish I could get hold of more of his work, but he seems to have done so little."

This time it was the younger man who interrupted.

"Tillotson? Tillotson?" He put his hand to his forehead. A frown incongruously distorted his round, floridly

curved face. "No-yes; I have it." He looked up triumphantly, with serene and childish brows. "Tillotson, Walter Tillotson; the man 's still alive." Badgery smiled.

we'll have this Adam fireplace taken down and replaced by something MauroGothic. And on these walls I 'll have mirrors or no, let me see." He sank into meditative silence, from which he

"Well, that's all right. Say he was born in 1820, painted his masterpiece when he was twenty-six, and it 's 1913 now. That's to say he 's only ninetythree. Not as old as Titian yet." "But he 's not been heard of since eighteen sixty," Lord Badgery protested.

"Precisely. Your mention of his name reminded me of the discovery I made the other day when I was looking through the obituary notices in the archives of "The World's Review.' One has to bring them up to date every year or so for fear of being caught napping if one of these old birds chooses to shuffle off suddenly. Well, there, among them, I remember my astonishment at the time, there I found Walter Tillotson's biography. Pretty full to eighteen sixty, and then a blank, except for a pencil note in the early nineteen hundreds to the effect that he had returned from the East. The obituary has never been used or added to. I draw the obvious conclusion: the old chap is n't dead yet. He's just been overlooked somehow."

"But this is extraordinary," Lord Badgery exclaimed. "You must find him, Spode; you must find him. I'll commission him to paint frescos round this room. It 's just what I 've always vainly longed for a real nineteenthcentury artist to decorate this place for me. Oh, we must find him at once, at once!"

Lord Badgery strode up and down in a state of great excitement.

"I can see how this room could be made quite perfect," he went on. “We'd clear away all these cases, and have the whole of that wall filled by a heroic fresco of Hector and Andromache, or 'Distraining for Rent,' or Fanny Kemble as Belvidera in 'Venice Preserved'— anything like that, provided it 's in the grand manner of the thirties and forties. And here I'd have a landscape with lovely receding perspectives, or else something architectural and grand in the style of Belshazzar's feast. Then

old man! the old man! Spode, we must find this astonishing old creature. And don't breathe a word to anybody. Tillotson shall be our secret. Oh, it's too perfect! It 's incredible! Think of the frescos!"

Lord Badgery's face had become positively animated. He had talked of a single subject for nearly a quarter of an hour.

THREE weeks later Lord Badgery was aroused from his usual after-luncheon somnolence by the arrival of a telegram. The message was a short one. "Found. Spode." A look of pleasure and intelligence made human Lord Badgery's clayey face of surfeit. "No answer," he said. The footman padded away on noiseless feet.

Lord Badgery closed his eyes and began to contemplate. Found! What a room he would have! There would be nothing like it in the world. The frescos, the fireplace, the mirrors, the ceiling, and a small, shriveled old man clambering about the scaffolding, agile and quick, like one of those whiskered little monkeys at the Zoo, painting away, painting away. Fanny Kemble as Belvidera, Hector and Andromache, or why not the Duke of Clarence in the Butt, the Duke of Malmsey, the Butt of Clarence -Lord Badgery was asleep.

Spode did not lag long behind his telegram. He was at Badgery House by six o'clock. His lordship was in the nineteenth-century chamber, engaged in clearing away with his own hands the bric-à-brac. Spode found him looking hot and out of breath.

"Ah, there you are," said Lord Badgery. "You see me already preparing for the great man's coming. Now you must tell me all about him."

"He's older even than I thought," said Spode. "He 's ninety-seven this year-born in 1816. Incredible, is n't it? There, I'm beginning at the wrong end." "Begin where you like," said Badgery, genially.

"I won't tell you all the incidents of the hunt. You 've no idea what a job I had to run him to earth. It was like a Sherlock Holmes story, immensely elaborate, too elaborate. I shall write a book about it some day. At any rate, I found him at last.”

"Where?"

"In a sort of respectable slum in Holloway, older and poorer and lonelier than you could have believed possible. I found out how it was he came to be forgotten, how he came to drop out of life in the way he did. He took it into his head, somewhere about the sixties, to go to Palestine to get local color for his religious pictures-scapegoats and things, you know. Well, he went to Jerusalem and then on to Mount Lebanon and on and on, and then, somewhere in the middle of Asia Minor, he got stuck. He got stuck for about forty years."

"But what did he do all that time?" "Oh, he painted, started a mission, and converted three Turks, and taught the local pashas the rudiments of English, Latin, perspective, and God knows what else. Then in about 1904 it seems to have occurred to him that he was getting rather old and had been away from home for rather a long time. So he made his way back to England, only to find that every one he had known was dead, that the dealers had never heard of him and would n't buy his pictures, that he was simply a ridiculous old figure of fun. So he got a job as a drawing-master in a girl's school in Holloway, and there he 's been ever since, growing older and older and feebler and feebler and blinder and deafer, until finally the school has given him the sack. He had about ten pounds in the world when I found him. He lives in a kind of black hole in a basement, full of beetles. When his ten pounds are spent, I suppose he 'll just quietly die there."

Badgery held up a white hand.

"No more, no more. I find literature quite depressing enough. I insist that life at least shall be a little gayer. Did you tell him I wanted him to paint my room?"

"But he can't paint. He 's too blind and palsied."

"Can't paint?" Badgery exclaimed in horror. "Then what 's the good of the old creature?"

"Well, if you put it like that-" Spode began.

"I shall never have my frescos. Ring the bell, will you?"

Spode rang.

"What right has Tillotson to go on existing if he can't paint?" went on Lord Badgery, petulantly. "After all, that was his only justification for occupying a place in the sun.”

"He does n't have much sun in his basement."

The footman appeared at the door.

"Get some one to put all these things back in their places," Lord Badgery commanded, indicating with a wave of the hand the ravaged cases, the confusion of glass and china with which he had littered the floor. "We'll go to the library, Spode; it's more comfortable there."

He led the way through the long gallery and down the stairs.

"I'm sorry old Tillotson has been such a disappointment," said Spode, sympathetically.

"Let us talk about something else; he ceases to interest me.'

"But don't you think we ought to do something about him? He's only got ten pounds between him and the workhouse. And if you 'd seen the black beetles in his basement!"

"Enough! enough! I'll do everything you think fitting."

"I thought we might get up a subscription among lovers of the arts."

"There are n't any," said Badgery. "No, but there are plenty of people who will subscribe out of snobisme." "Not unless you give them something for their money."

"That 's true. I had n't thought of that." Spode was silent for a moment. "We might have a dinner in his honor. The Great Tillotson Banquet. Doyen of British art. A link with the past. Can't you see it in the papers? I'd make a stunt of it in 'The World's Review.' That ought to bring in the snobs."

"And we 'll invite a lot of artists and critics all the ones who can't stand one another. It will be fun to see them squabbling." Badgery laughed. Then

his face darkened once again. "Still," he added, "it 'll be a very poor second best to my frescos. You'll stay to dinner, of course.”

"Well, since you suggest it. Thank's very much."

THE Tillotson banquet was fixed to take place about three weeks later. Spode, who had charge of the arrangements, proved himself an excellent organizer. He secured the big banqueting-room at the Café Bomba and was successful in bullying and cajoling the manager into giving fifty persons dinner at twelve shillings a head, including wine. He sent out invitations and collected subscriptions. He wrote an article on Tillotson in "The World's Review," one of those charming, witty articles, couched in the tone of amused patronage and contempt, with which one speaks of the great men of 1840. Nor did he neglect Tillotson himself. He used to go to Holloway almost every day to listen to the old man's endless stories about Asia Minor and the great exhibition of fiftyone and Benjamin Robert Haydon. He was sincerely sorry for this relic of another age.

Mr. Tillotson's room was about ten feet below the level of the soil of South Holloway. A little gray light percolated through the area-bars, forced a difficult passage through panes opaque with dirt, and spent itself, like a drop of milk that falls into an ink-pot, among the inveterate shadows of the dungeon. The place was haunted by the sour smell of damp plaster and of woodwork that has begun to molder secretly at the heart. A little miscellaneous furniture, including a bed, a washstand, chest of drawers, a table, and one or two chairs, lurked in the obscure corners of the den or ventured furtively out into the open. Hither Spode now came almost every day and every day he found Mr. Tillotson sitting in the same place under the window, bathing, as it were, in his tiny puddle of light. "The oldest man that ever wore gray hairs," Spode reflected as he looked at him. Only there were very few hairs left on that bald, unpolished head. At the sound of the visitor's knock Mr. Tillotson would turn in his chair, and stare in the direc

tion of the door with blinking, uncertain, eyes. He was always full of apologies for being so slow in recognizing who was there.

"No discourtesy meant," he would say after asking. "It 's not as if I had forgotten who you were. Only it's so dark, and my sight is n't what it was."

After that he never failed to give a little laugh, and, pointing out of the window at the area-railings, would say:

"Ah, this is the place for somebody with good sight. It's the place for looking at ankles. It's the grand stand."

It was the day before the great event. Spode came as usual; Mr. Tillotson punctually made his little joke about the ankles, and Spode as punctually laughed.

"Well, Mr. Tillotson," he said, after the reverberation of the joke had died away, "to-morrow you make your re-entry into the world of art and fashion. You'll find some changes."

"I've always had such extraordinary luck," said Mr. Tillotson, and Spode could see by his expression that he genuinely believed it; that he had forgotten the black hole and the black beetles and the almost exhausted ten pounds that stood between him and the workhouse. "What an amazing piece of good fortune, for instance, that you should have found me just when you did! Now, this dinner will bring me back to my place in the world. I shall have money, and in a little while -who knows?-I shall be able to see well enough to paint again. I believe my eyes are getting better, you know. Ah, the future is very rosy."

Mr. Tillotson looked up, his face puckered into a smile, and he nodded his head in affirmation of his words.

"You believe in the life to come?" said Spode, and immediately flushed for shame at the cruelty of the words.

But Mr. Tillotson was in far too cheerful a mood to have caught their signifi

cance.

"Life to come?" he repeated. "No, I don't believe in any of that stuff-not since 1859. The 'Origin of Species' changed my views, you know. No life to come for me, thank you! You don't remember the excitement, of course. You 're very young, Mr. Spode."