Young Thorpe had not returned from Mr. Blyth’s when Mat entered the lodgings with these purchases. He put the bottles, the sugar, and the lemons in the cupboard--cast a satisfied look at the three clean tumblers and spoons already standing on the shelf--relaxed so far from his usual composure of aspect as to smile--lit the fire, and heaped plenty of coal on, to keep it alight--then sat down on his bearskins--wriggled himself comfortably into the corner, and threw his handkerchief over his face; chuckling gruffly for the first time since the past night, as he put his hand in his pockets, and so accidentally touched the lump of wax that lay in one of them. “Now I’m all ready for the Painter-Man,” growled Mat behind the handkerchief, as he quietly settled himself to go to sleep. CHAPTER X. THE SQUAW’S MIXTURE. Like the vast majority of those persons who are favored by Nature with, what is commonly termed, “a high flow of animal spirits,” Zack was liable, at certain times and seasons, to fall from the heights of exhilaration to the depths of despair, without stopping for a moment, by the way, at any intermediate stages of moderate cheerfulness, pensive depression, or tearful gloom. After he had parted from his mother, he presented himself again at Mr. Blyth’s house, in such a prostrate condition of mind, and talked of his delinquencies and their effect on his father’s spirits, with such vehement bitterness of self-reproach, as quite amazed Valentine, and even alarmed him a little on the lad’s account. The good-natured painter was no friend to contrite desperation of any kind, and no believer in repentance, which could not look hopefully forward to the future, as well as sorrowfully back at the past. So he laid down his brush, just as he was about to begin varnishing the “Golden Age;” and set himself to console Zack, by reminding him of all the credit and honor he might yet win, if he was regular in attending to his new studies--if he never flinched from work at the British Museum, and the private Drawing School to which he was immediately to be introduced--and if he ended as he well might end, in excusing to his father his determination to be an artist, by showing Mr. Thorpe a prize medal, won by the industry of his son’s hand in the Schools of the Royal Academy.