Gerald heard his father's communication with glowing eyes. For shame's sake he hid his joy, for he knew that, with all his stolid demeanor, his father almost broke down as he contemplated the diverging paths his son and he must henceforward thread. The boy thanked him from his heart, and the rough farmer, laying his hand on his child's head, blessed him and bade him go and prosper. In this way Gerald Leigh left Coombe-Acton. At long intervals he reappeared for a few days. The worthy villagers eyed him askance; the only conception they could form of his profession being connected with dark-skinned itinerants who bore double-tiered platforms on their heads, and earned a precarious livehood by traversing the country selling conventional representations of angels and busts of eminent men. CHAPTER II. Some seven years after the ambitious boy left Coombe-Acton, honest farmer Abraham, just when the old-fashioned hawthorn hedges were in whitest bloom, sickened, turned his stolid face to the wall and died. Gerald had been summoned, but arrived too late to see his father alive. Perhaps it was as well it should be so, the farmer's last moments were troubled ones and full of regret that Watercress Farm would no longer know a Leigh. The nephew who had taken Gerald's place had turned out an utter failure, so much so that Abraham Leigh had roundly declared that he would be bothered with no more boys, and for the last few years had managed his business single-handed. However, although Gerald's upheaval of family traditions made the farmer's deathbed unhappy, he showed that his son had not forfeited his love. All he possessed, some three thousand pounds, was left to him. Mr. Herbert took the lease of the farm off the young man's hands, by and by the live and the dead stock were sold off, and Watercress Farm was waiting for another tenant. The winding-up of the father's affairs kept Gerald in the neighborhood of some weeks, and when it became known that Mr. Herbert had insisted upon his taking up his quarters at the hall the simple Coombe-Acton folks were stricken with a great wonder. Knowing nothing of what is called the "aristocracy of art," their minds were much exercised by such an unheard of proceeding. What had "Jerry" Leigh being doing in the last seven years to merit such a distinction?