er sons, are still eating out of the hand of their eldest
brother, Lord Bellim. But not Old Ivory. He bought himself an annuity
ten years ago. How did he do it? Well, he had enough intelligence to
realize that he hadn't much. He decided he could learn to shoot well at
fifty yards. He did. Then he went after elephants, and got 'em, in a day
when they shipped ivory not by the tusk, but by the ton, and sold it at
fifteen shillings a pound." As they walked back to the flat, Leighton
said: "Now, take your time and think. Is there anything you know how to
do well?"

"Nothing," stammered Lewis--"nothing except goats."

"Ah, yes, goats," said Leighton, but his thoughts were not on goats.
Back in his den, he took from a drawer in the great oak desk the kid
that Lewis had molded in clay and its broken legs, for another had gone.
He looked at the fragments thoughtfully. "To my mind," he said, "there
is little doubt but that you could become efficient at terra-cotta
designing; you might even become a sculptor."

"A sculptor!" repeated Lewis, as though he voiced a dream.

Leighton paid no attention to the interruption. "I hesitate, however, to
give you a start toward art because you carry an air of success with
you. One predicts success for you too--too confidently. And success in
art is a formidable source of danger."

"Success a source of danger, Dad?"

"In art," corrected Leighton.

"Yesterday," he continued, "you wanted to stop at a shop window, and I
wouldn't let you. The window contained an inane repetition display of
thirty horrible prints at two and six each of Lalan's 'Triumph.'"
Leighton sprang to his feet. "God! Poster lithographs at two and six!
Boy, Lalan's 'Triumph' _was_ a triumph once. He turned it into a mere
success. Before the paint was dry, he let them commercialize his
picture, not in sturdy, faithful prints, but in that--that rubbish."

Leighton strode up and down the room, his arms behind him, his eyes on
the floor.

"Taking art into the poor man's home, they call it. Bah! If you multiply
the greatest glory that the genius of man ever imprisoned, and put it
all over the walls of your house,--bath, kitchen and under the
bed,--you'll find the mean level of that glory is reduced to the terms
of the humblest of household utensils."

A smile nickered in Lewis's eyes, but Leighton did not look up.

"Art is never a constant," he continued. "It feeds on spirit, and spirit
is evanescent. A truly great pict