Have you anything you'd let me see?'

Fenwick, flushed and stammering, begged him to walk upstairs.
Cuningham's puzzled impression was that he gave the invitation
reluctantly, but could not make up his mind not to give it.

They marched upstairs, Lord Findon and Cuningham behind.

'Does he ever sell?' said Lord Findon, in Cuningham's ear, nodding
towards the broad shoulders and black head of Watson just in front.

'Not often,' said Cuningham, after a pause.

'How, then, does he afford himself?' said the other, smiling.

'Oh! he has means--just enough to keep him from starving. He's a dear
old fellow! He has too many ideas for this wicked world.'

Cuningham spoke with a pleasant loyalty. Lord Findon shrugged his
shoulders.

'The ideas are too lugubrious! And this young fellow--this
Fenwick--where did you pick him up?'

Cuningham explained.

'A character!--perhaps a genius?' said Findon. 'He has a clever,
quarrelsome eye. Unmarried? Good Lord, I hope so, after the way I've
been going on.'

Cuningham laughed. 'We've seen no sign of a wife. But I really know
nothing about him.'

They were entering the upper room, and at sight of the large picture
it contained, Lord Findon exclaimed:

'My goodness!--what an ambitious thing!'

The three men gathered in front of the picture. Fenwick lingered
nervously behind them.

'What do you call it?' said Lord Findon, putting up his glasses.

'The "Genius Loci,"' said Fenwick, fumbling a little with the words.

It represented a young woman seated on the edge of a Westmoreland
ghyll or ravine. Behind her the white water of the beck flowed steeply
down from shelf to shelf; beyond the beck rose far-receding walls of
mountain, purple on purple, blue on blue. Light, scantily nourished
trees, sycamore or mountain-ash, climbed the green sides of the ghyll,
and framed the woman's form. She sat on a stone, bending over a frail
new-born lamb upon her lap, whereof the mother lay beside her. Against
her knee leaned a fair-haired child. The pitiful concern in the
woman's lovely eyes was reflected in the soft wonder of the child's.
Both, it seemed, were of the people. The drawing was full of rustical
suggestion, touched here and there by a harsh realism that did but
heighten the general harmony. The woman's grave comeliness flowered
naturally, as it were, out of the scene. She was no model posing with
a Westmoreland stream for background. She seemed a part of the fells;
their sile