by the painter's art than by the subject.

"Absolutely a certified Velasquez, bought from the estate of Count
Galting," continued his father. "I paid a cool two hundred and fifty
thousand for it. And that isn't all, Jack, that isn't all that you are
going to drudge for as an apprentice in the delivery department. I know
what I am talking about. I wasn't fooled by any of the genealogists who
manufacture ancestors. I had it all looked up by four experts, checking
one off against another."

"Yes," answered Jack, absently. He had hardly heard his father's words.
In fervent scrutiny he was leaning forward, his weight on the ball of the
foot, the attitude of the man in the picture.

"And who do you think he is--who?" pursued John Wingfield, Sr.

"A man who fought face to face with the enemy; a man whom men followed!
Velasquez caught all that!" answered Jack.

"That old fellow was a great man in his day--a great Englishman--and his
name was John Wingfield! He was your ancestor and mine!"

After a quick breath of awakening comprehension Jack took a step nearer
the portrait, all his faculties in the throe of beaming inquiry of Senor
Don't Care and desert freedom, in the self-same, alert readiness of pose
as the figure he was facing.

"They say I resemble him!" The father repeated that phrase which he had
used in benignant satisfaction to many a guest, but now seeing with
greedy eyes a likeness between his son and the ancestor deeper than mere
resemblance of feature, he added: "But you--you, Jack, you're the dead
spit of him!"

"Yes," said Jack, as if he either were not surprised or were too
engrossed to be interested. To the buccaneer's "After you, sir; and,
then, your finish, sir!" he seemed to be saying, in the fully-lived
spirit of imagination: "A good epitaph, sir! I'll see that it is written
on your tombstone!"

The father, singularly affected by the mutual and enjoyed challenge that
he was witnessing, half expected to see a sword leap out of the scabbard
of the canvas and another from Jack's side.

"If he had lived in our day," said the father, "he would have built
himself a great place; he would have been the head of a great
institution, just as I am."

"Two centuries is a long way to fetch a comparison," answered Jack,
hazily, out of a corner of his brain still reserved for conversation,
while all the rest of it was centered elsewhere. "He might have been a
cow-puncher, a revolutionist, or an aviator. Certa