he remotest suspicion that the Marquis was you. I must say,
though," continued Brown, reflectively, and looking closely at Jaune,
"that it was stupid of me. I did think that you had a familiar sort of
look; and once, I remember, it did occur to me that you looked
astonishingly like yourself. It--it was the clothes, you see, that
threw me out. Where ever did you get such a stunning rig? I don't
believe that I'd have known you dressed like that, even if you hadn't
been gray and wrinkled. But tell me all about it, old man. It must have
been jolly fun!"

"Fun!" groaned Jaune; "it was the despair!" And then, his heart being
very full and his longing for sympathy overpowering, Jatine told Brown
the whole story. "But what is this of one bet, my dear Van," he
concluded, "I do not of the least know."

"Well, here it all is in the paper, anyway. Calls you 'a distinguished
animal-painter,' and alludes to your 'strikingly vigorous "Lioness and
Cubs" and powerful "Dray Horses" at the last spring exhibition of the
Society of American Artists.' Must be somebody who knows you, you see,
and somebody who means well by you, too. There's nothing at all about
your being an advertisement; indeed, there's nothing in the story but a
good joke, of which you are the hero. It's an eccentric sort of
heroism, to be sure; but then, for some unknown reason, people never
seem to believe that artists are rational human beings, so your
eccentricity will do you no harm. And it's no end of an advertisement
for you. Whoever wrote it meant well by you. And, by Jove! I know who
it is! It's little Conte Crayon. He's a good-hearted little beggar, and
he likes you ever so much, for I've heard him say so; but how he ever
got hold of the story, and especially of such a jolly version of it, I
don't see."

At this moment, by a pleasing coincidence, Conte Crayon himself
appeared with the desired explanation. "You see," he said, "that beast
of a Siccatif de Courtray hunted me up yesterday and told me the yarn
about you and the slop-shop man. He wanted me to write it up and
publish it, 'as a joke,' he said; but it was clear enough that he was
in ugly earnest about it. And so, you see, I had to rush it into print
in the way I chose to tell it--which won't do you a bit of harm,
d'Antimoine--in order to head him off. The blackguard meant to get you
into a mess, and if I'd hung fire he'd have told somebody else about
it, and had the real story published. Of course, you