“We will go away now and leave it in peace; only promise me, Adam, that when it grows strong it shall run free, and no one shall kill it; remember, it is my guest.” Adam promised, and hastily securing the latch, they went back to the house. The Cub went to the library to tell his mother of the adventure, but Brooke lingered in the kitchen. A half-hour passed, and hearing no sound, the Cub went to the door. Returning softly, he beckoned his mother to follow, and together they stood in the shadow of the doorway, looking into the room. Two lamps stood side by side on the mantel-shelf, casting an oblique light; below and at one side of the fireplace stood Brooke, palette in hand, a straight-backed chair before her; resting on its arms, as if it were an easel, was the great oblong bread-board, and on this the girl was painting, with broad rapid strokes, the head of a fox. Her cloak still hung from her shoulders, her cheeks glowed; her eyes they could not see until she half turned her head for a moment as if following a strayed memory, then they noticed a strange light in them as of inspiration. Quietly they crept back into the dark and waited. An hour passed; still Brooke kept at work. Another thirty minutes and they heard the chair move and again they went to the door. Brooke stood back from the improvised easel, her hands behind her, looking at her work. From the board gazed back the head of the little fox, roughly done, but with the look in its eyes at once hunted, defiant, and pleading,—not an image, a created thing, living and breathing. Through suffering and its kinship had come the revelation to Brooke that if she willed she might be the painter of animals, and as she looked again, Lorenz’ words sounded in her ears. She had felt and suffered, and had seen her vision in the eyes of the hunted beast. She had interpreted it, she felt for what it stood, and now, crude as was the labor, it lived under her brush. She had awakened, but the strength of the vital touch was his, and he could not know it. Kneeling before the chair with clasped hands, as if at some shrine, not to the picture, but to what it stood for, Brooke took new courage. Before his mother could restrain Adam he had dashed across the kitchen, and stood a moment with his hands resting on his sister’s shoulders. Then, without warning, he tipped back her head and gave her a kiss of genuine boyish enthusiasm, crying, “That’s a living picture all right, Sis. Look out it don’t get away from you. I bet you’ve struck your luck this time.” CHAPTER XIII AT THE SIGN OF THE FOX