lent, full of their own
thoughts. Barty spoke first.

"It's a wonder to me! I didn't think you could paint like that, Larry!
I didn't think anyone could!"

"Well, no more I can, really. This was a sort of a miracle and it
painted itself."

The same impulse moved them both, and they returned to the easel on
which was the picture, but with a quick movement Larry flung the
drapery over the frame again and hid the picture.

"Didn't you say you had a message for me from your father?"

Barty accepted the change of subject with his accustomed resignation
to Larry's moods.

"I have. He said he'd be at home to-morrow afternoon--that's
Sunday--and he wanted to see you on very special business."

"Do you know what about?" Larry asked, without interest, while he
arranged the many-coloured silken drapery in effective folds over the
picture.

"I believe old Prendergast's dying."

Barty hesitated; then, remembering that his father had not enjoined
secrecy, he rushed into his subject. "Larry, I believe the chance
we've been waiting for is come--or as good as come!"

"Do you mean that it's Prendergast the Member who's dying? Do you mean
my getting into Parliament?"

Larry swung round on Barty, and fired the questions at him, quick as
shots from a revolver.

The colour rose again in Barty's face. His dark, shortsighted eyes,
that were set on Larry, had a sudden glow in them. He nodded.

"He's likely dead by now! Oh Larry!" he cried, panting in his
eagerness. "May be the chance has come at last! I believe you might be
the man Ireland wants! I believe you might take Parnell's place! Me
fawther says you're certain to be nominated, and there's no
opposition, of course. Anyhow, if there were, itself, you'd go in
flying, just the same! You're the man we're all waiting for! Larry,
old cock! The day will come when I'll be bragging that I was the one
first gave you the notion to go into politics!"

Larry was gazing at his man of business, whose aspect, it may be
conceded, was at this moment singularly at variance with the usual
conception of such a functionary. The man of business gazed back at
him, the glow intensifying behind his eye-glasses and gathering energy
from the answering gleam in Larry's eyes.

"The Bloody Wars!" uttered Larry, slowly and quite irrelevantly, and
with great emphasis. "By all the crosses in a yard of check! Let me
hold on to something and think! This is a game and a half! I must
think furiously!"