master should
do, he could not get the change out of him. So in a short while he grew
suspicious. "What is the boy up to?" he wondered. "I have my eye on him
all day: it must be at night that he gets into mischief."

It did not take Tiki-pu's master a night's watching to find that
something surreptitious was certainly going on. When it was dark he took
up his post outside the studio, to see whether by any chance Tiki-pu had
some way of getting out; and before long he saw a faint light showing
through the window. So he came and thrust his finger softly through one
of the panes, and put his eye to the hole.

There inside was a candle burning on a stand, and Tiki-pu squatting with
paint-pots and brush in front of Wio-Wani's last masterpiece.

"What fine piece of burglary is this?" thought he; "what serpent have I
been harbouring in my bosom? Is this beast of a grub of a boy
thinking to make himself a painter and cut me out of my reputation and
prosperity?" For even at that distance he could perceive plainly that
the work of this boy went head and shoulders beyond his, or that of any
painter then living.

Presently Wio-wani opened his door and came down the path, as was his
habit now each night, to call Tiki-pu to his lesson. He advanced to the
front of his picture and beckoned for Tiki-pu to come in with him; and
Tiki-pu's master grew clammy at the knees as he beheld Tiki-pu catch
hold of Wio-wani's hand and jump into the picture, and skip up the green
path by Wio-wani's side, and in through the little door that Wio-wani
had painted so beautifully in the end wall of his palace!

For a time Tiki-pu's master stood glued to the spot with grief and
horror. "Oh, you deadly little underling! Oh, you poisonous little
caretaker, you parasite, you vampire, you fly in amber!" cried he,
"is that where you get your training? Is it there that you dare to go
trespassing; into a picture that I purchased for my own pleasure and
profit, and not at all for yours? Very soon we will see whom it really
belongs to!"

He ripped out the paper of the largest window-pane and pushed his way
through into the studio. Then in great haste he took up paint-pot and
brush, and sacrilegiously set himself to work upon Wio-wani's last
masterpiece. In the place of the doorway by which Tiki-pu had entered
he painted a solid brick wall; twice over he painted it, making it two
bricks thick; brick by brick he painted it, and mortared every brick
to its plac