he joking; "you look as if
you had seen a vision."

"So I feel," said Edward; "excuse me for troubling you with a visit."

"We ought not to be such strangers, my young friend," said the old man
heartily; "it is now upwards of four years since you have entered my
house. Is it right that your father's friend, your former guardian, who
certainly always meant well by you, though we had at that time some
differences, should be so totally forgotten?"

Edward blushed, and did not immediately know what to answer. "I did not
suppose that you would miss me," he stammered out at last, "much--every
thing might have been otherwise; but the errors of youth----"

"Let us drop that subject," cried the old man gaily; "what prevents us
from renewing our former acquaintance and friendship? What brings you
to me now?"

Edward looked downwards, then cast a hasty transient glance at his old
friend, still hesitated, and at last went with lingering step to the
pillar where the picture was standing, and took it out of its cover.
"See here," said he, "what I have found unexpectedly among the property
left me by my father; a picture that was kept in a book-case which I
had not opened for years. Judges tell me it is an excellent Salvator
Rosa."

"So it is!" exclaimed old Walther, with enthusiasm in his looks. "Ay,
that is a glorious prize! A happy chance to light upon it so
unexpectedly. Yes, my dear departed friend had treasures in his house,
and did not know himself all he was master of."

He set the picture in the right light, examined it with beaming eyes,
went closer, then back again, pursued the outlines of the figures from
a distance with the finger of a connoisseur, and then said, "Will you
part with it? Name your price, and if it be not too high the picture
is mine."

In the meanwhile a stranger came up, who had been taking a drawing
after a Julio Romano in another quarter of the gallery. "A Salvator?"
he asked with a somewhat sarcastic tone, "which you have really found
among the heir-looms of an inheritance?"

"Certainly," said Edward, cavalierly surveying the stranger, whose
plain frock and simple air gave him about the appearance of a
travelling artist.

"You have then been yourself imposed on," answered the stranger in a
haughty rough tone, "if it be not your intention to impose on others;
for this picture is evidently a pretty modern one, perhaps is quite
new; at all events not above ten years old; an imitation of the