to
one's head."

Paul did not reply, and reverential emotion kept Barney Bill silent
until they reached the clump of trees and the Little Bear Inn.

It was set back from the road, in a kind of dusty courtyard masked off
on one side by a gigantic elm and on the other by the fringe of an
orchard with ruddy apples hanging patiently beneath the foliage. Close
by the orchard stood the post bearing the signboard on which the Little
Bear, an engaging beast, was pictured, and presiding in a ceremonious
way over the horse-trough below. In the shade of the elm stretched a
trestle table and two wooden benches. The old inn, gabled,
half-timbered, its upper story overhanging the doorway, bent and
crippled, though serene, with age, mellow in yellow and russet,
spectacled, as befitted its years, with leaded diamond panes, crowned
deep in secular thatch, smiled with the calm and homely peace of
everlasting things. Its old dignity even covered the perky gilt
inscription over the doorway, telling how James Blake was licensed to
sell a variety of alcoholic beverages. One human figure alone was
visible, as the chairs and mat-laden van slowly turned from the road
toward the horse-trough--that of a young man in straw hat and grey
flannels making a water-colour sketch of the inn.

Barney Bill slid off the footboard, and, looking neither to right nor
left, bolted like a belated crab into the cool recesses of the bar in
search of ambrosia from the blue-and-white china mug. Paul, also afoot,
led Bob to the trough. Bob drank with the lusty moderation of beasts.
When he had assuaged his thirst Paul backed him into the road and,
slinging over his head a comforting nosebag, left him to his meal.

The young man, sitting on an upturned wooden case, at the extreme edge
of the elm tree's shade, a slender easel before him, a litter of
paraphernalia on the ground by his side, painted assiduously. Paul idly
crept behind him and watched in amazement the smears of wet colour,
after a second or two of apparent irrelevance, take their place in the
essential structure of the drawing. He stood absorbed. He knew that
there were such things as pictures. He knew, too, that they were made
by hands. But he had never seen one in the making. After a while the
artist threw back his head, looked at the inn and looked at his sketch.
There was a hot bit of thatch at the corner near the orchard, and,
below the eaves, bold shadow. The shadow had not come right. He put in