by that, and by his being very lame.

"That brought me back with a start. I rushed at her with questions. 'How
about the picture? Were there others? Were there many? Had he always
painted? Had he never shown them to anyone? Was he painting now?

"She could not tell me much. It had been a detail of their common life she
had but absently remarked, as though she had lived with a man who
collected snail-shells, or studied the post-marks on letters. She 'had
never noticed'--that was the answer to most of my questions. No, she did
not think there were very many now, though he must have painted 'most a
million. He was always at it, every minute he could spare from farming.
But they had been so poor he had not felt he could afford many canvases.
The paints cost a good deal too. So he painted them over and over, first
one thing and then another, as he happened to fancy. He painted in the
horse-barn. 'Had a place rigged up,' in her phrase, in one corner of the
room where the hay was stored, and had cut a big window in the roof that
was apt to let in water on the hay if the rain came from the north.

"'What did he paint?' 'Oh, anything. He was queer about that. He'd paint
_any_thing! He did one picture of nothing but the corner of the barnyard,
with a big white sow and some little pigs in the straw, early in the
morning, when the dew was on everything. He had thought quite a lot of
that, but he had had to paint over it to make the picture of her little
sister with the yellow kittie--the one she'd sent down to the village to
try to sell, the one--'

"'Yes, yes,' I told her, 'the one I saw. But did he never try to sell any
himself? Did he never even show them to anyone?'

"She hesitated, tried to remember, and said that once when they were very
poor, and there was a big doctor's bill to pay, he _had_ sent a picture
down to New York. But it was sent back. They had made a good deal of fun
of it, the people down there, because it wasn't finished off enough. She
thought her uncle's feelings had been hurt by their letter. The express
down and back had cost a good deal too, and the only frame he had got
broken. Altogether, she guessed that discouraged him. Anyhow, he'd never
tried again. He seemed to get so after a while that he didn't care whether
anybody liked them or even saw them or not--he just painted them to amuse
himself, she guessed. He seemed to get a good real of comfort out of it.
It made his face very still and smiling to