ld Jimmie and Barney, and then his scene with Maggie, regarded
her grandson with that emotionless, mummified face in which only the
red-margined eyes showed life or interest.

"So you're going to go straight, eh?" queried Hunt. The big painter sat
with his long legs sprawling in front of him, a black pipe in his mouth,
and looked at Larry skeptically. "You certainly did hand a jolt to your
friends who'd been counting on you. And yet you're sore because they
were sore at you and didn't believe in you."

"Did I say that I was sore?" queried Larry.

"No, but you're acting it. And you're sore at Maggie because she didn't
believe that you could make good or that you'd stick it out. Well, I
don't believe you will either."

"You're a great painter, Hunt, and a great cook--but I don't give a damn
what you believe."

"Keep your shirt on, young fellow," Hunt responded, puffing
imperturbably. "I say I believe you won't win out--but that's not saying
I don't want you to win out. If that's what you want to do, go to it,
and may luck be with you, and may the devil stay in hell. The morals of
other people are out of my line--none of my business. I'm a painter, and
it's my business to paint people as I find them. But Maggie certainly
did put her finger on the tough spot in your proposition: for a crook to
find a job and win the confidence of people. It's up grade all the way,
and it takes ten men's nerve to stick it out to the top. Yep, Maggie was
sure right!"

And then the Duchess broke her accustomed silence with her thin croak:

"Never you mind Maggie! She thinks she knows everything, but she doesn't
know anything."

Larry looked in surprise at his grandmother. There was a flash in her
old eyes; but the next moment the spark was gone.

"Sure you're up against it--but I'll be rooting for you." Hunt was
grinning. "But say, young fellow, what made you decide to vote the other
ticket?"

Larry was trained at reading faces; and in the rough-hewn, grinning
features of Hunt he read good-fellowship. Larry swiftly responded in
kind, for from the moment he had pulled the mask of being a fool from
the painter and shown him to be a real artist, he had felt drawn toward
this impecunious swashbuckler of the arts. So he now repeated the
business motives which he had presented to Barney and Old Jimmie. As
Larry talked he became more spontaneous, and after a time he was telling
of the effect upon him of seeing various shrewd men locked up