visage flamed with rage. "Don't get my
check until Monday morning, any time after ten!" he yelled, and flung a
portfolio of mottled green into the danger zone of the casts.

"Thunder!" said Pennoyer, sinking at once into a profound despair

"Monday morning, any time after ten," murmured Wrinkles, in astonishment
and sorrow.

While Grief marched to and fro threatening the furniture, Pennoyer and
Wrinkles allowed their under jaws to fall, and remained as men smitten
between the eyes by the god of calamity.

"Singular thing!" muttered Pennoyer at last. "You get so frightfully
hungry as soon as you learn that there are no more meals coming."

"Oh, well----" said Wrinkles. He took up his guitar.

Oh, some folks say dat a niggah won' steal,
'Way down yondeh in d' cohn'-fiel';
But Ah caught two in my cohn'-fiel',
Way down yondeh in d' cohn'-fiel'.

"Oh, let up!" said Grief, as if unwilling to be moved from his despair.

"Oh, let up!" said Pennoyer, as if he disliked the voice and the ballad.

In his studio, Hawker sat braced nervously forward on a little stool
before his tall Dutch easel. Three sketches lay on the floor near him,
and he glared at them constantly while painting at the large canvas on
the easel.

He seemed engaged in some kind of a duel. His hair dishevelled, his eyes
gleaming, he was in a deadly scuffle. In the sketches was the landscape
of heavy blue, as if seen through powder-smoke, and all the skies burned
red. There was in these notes a sinister quality of hopelessness,
eloquent of a defeat, as if the scene represented the last hour on a
field of disastrous battle. Hawker seemed attacking with this picture
something fair and beautiful of his own life, a possession of his mind,
and he did it fiercely, mercilessly, formidably. His arm moved with the
energy of a strange wrath. He might have been thrusting with a sword.

There was a knock at the door. "Come in." Pennoyer entered sheepishly.
"Well?" cried Hawker, with an echo of savagery in his voice. He turned
from the canvas precisely as one might emerge from a fight. "Oh!" he
said, perceiving Pennoyer. The glow in his eyes slowly changed. "What is
it, Penny?"

"Billie," said Pennoyer, "Grief was to get his check to-day, but they
put him off until Monday, and so, you know--er--well----"

"Oh!" said Hawker again.

When Pennoyer had gone Hawker sat motionless before his work. He stared
at the canvas in a meditation so profound that i