,
still less inquiring about. I am surprised he never told me, but I
suppose he could not wind himself up to the point, and I have no doubt
he intended to tell me some day, and would have done so if he hadn't
been carried off so suddenly. Anyhow, he knew me well enough to be sure
that when I heard of this mortgage, and learned how it had been done
that my love and respect for him would be sufficient to prevent my
trying to search into his past. He little thought that the mortgage
would not affect me to the extent of a penny. Well, there is an end of
it, and I won't think any more about the matter the secret is dead and
buried; let it rest there. And now it is time to be off to my work."

CHAPTER IV.

A year later Cuthbert Hartington was sitting in a room, somewhat better
furnished than the majority of the students' lodgings, on the second
floor of a house in Quartier Latin. The occupant of the room below,
Arnold Dampierre, was with him. He was a man three or four years
Cuthbert's junior, handsome, grave-eyed, and slightly built; he was a
native of Louisiana, and his dark complexion showed a taint of Mulatto
blood in his veins.

"So you have made up your mind to stay," he said.

"Certainly, I intend to see it through; in the first place I don't want
to break off my work, and as you know am ambitious enough to intend to
get a couple of pictures finished in time for the Salon, although
whether they will hang there, is another matter altogether."

"Don't pretend to be modest, Cuthbert. You know well enough they will be
hung, and more than that, they will be a success. I would wager a
hundred dollars to a cent on it, though you haven't as yet settled on
the subjects. You know that you are Goude's favorite pupil and that he
predicts great things for you, and there is not one of us who does not
agree with him. You know what Goude said of the last thing you did.
'Gentlemen, I should be proud to be able to sign my name in the corner
of this picture, it is admirable.'"

"It was but a little thing," Cuthbert said, carelessly, but nevertheless
coloring slightly, "I hope to do much better work in the course of
another year." Then he went back to the former subject of conversation.

"Yes, I shall see it through. We have had a good many excitements
already--the march away of the troops, and the wild enthusiasm and the
shouts of 'A Berlin!' I don't think there was a soul in the crowd who
was not convinced that the Germa