ck, as
he yawned and extended his arms. "What glorious weather! It would be a
shame to stop indoors."

A mental picture of the silvery Thames, green-wooded and sunny, proved
too strong an allurement to resist. Jack did not know that Destiny,
watchful of opportunity, had taken this beguiling shape to lead him to
a turning-point of his life--to steer him into the thick of troubled and
restless waters, of gray clouds and threatening storms. He discarded
his paint-smeared blouse--he had worn one since his Paris days--and,
getting quickly into white flannel and a river hat, he lit a briar pipe
and went forth whistling to meet his fate.

He was fond of walking, and he knew every foot of old Chiswick by heart.
He struck across the high-road, down a street of trim villas to a more
squalid neighborhood, and came out by the lower end of Chiswick Mall,
sacred to memories of the past. He lingered for a moment by the stately
house immortalized by Thackeray in Vanity Fair, and pictured Amelia
Sedley rolling out of the gates in her father's carriage, while Becky
Sharpe hurled the offending dictionary at the scandalized Miss
Pinkerton. Tempted by the signboard of the Red Lion, and by the
red-sailed wherries clustered between the dock and the eyot, he stopped
to quaff a foaming pewter on a bench outside the old inn.

A little later he had threaded the quaint passage behind Chiswick
Church, left the sonorous hammering of Thorneycroft's behind him, and
was stepping briskly along Burlington Lane, with the high wall of
Devonshire House on his right, and on his left, far over hedges and
orchards, the riverside houses of Barnes. He was almost sorry when he
reached Maynard's boat-house, where he kept a couple of light and
serviceable craft; but the dimpled bosom of the Thames, sparkling in the
sunlight, woke a fresh enthusiasm in his heart, and made him long to
transfer the picture to canvas.

"Even a Turner could not do it half justice," he reflected.

It was indeed a scene to defy any artist, but there were some bold enough
to attempt it. As Jack pulled up the river he saw, here and there, a
fellow-craftsman ensconced in a shady nook with easel and camp-chair. His
vigorous strokes sent him rapidly by Strand-on-the-Green, that secluded
bit of a village which so few Londoners have taken the trouble to search
out. A narrow paved quay, fringed with stately elm trees, separated the
old-fashioned, many-colored houses from the reedy shore, whe