“Nonsense!” cried Zack, seeing that Mat was beginning to fidget away from Valentine, instead of returning an answer. “Nonsense! you were glorious company. We were three choice spirits, and you were number One of the social Trio. Away with Melancholy! Do you still keep in the same mind about drawing Mat’s arms? He will be delighted to come, and so shall I; and we’ll all get virtuously uproarious this time, on toast-and-water and tea.” “Of course I keep in the same mind,” returned Mr. Blyth. “I had my senses about me, at any rate, when I invited you and your friend here to-night. Not that I shall be able to do much, I am afraid, in the way of drawing--for a letter has come this morning to hurry me into the country. Another portrait-job has turned up, and I shall have to start to-morrow. However, I can get in the outline of your friend’s arms to-night, and leave the rest to be done when I come back--Shall I take that sketch down for you, my dear sir, to look at close?” continued Valentine, suddenly raising his voice, and addressing himself to Mat. “I venture to think it one of my most contentious studies from actual nature.” While Mr. Blyth and Zack had been whispering together, Mat had walked away from them quietly towards one end of the room, and was now standing close to a door, lined inside with sheet iron, having bolts at top and bottom, and leading down a flight of steps from the studio into the back garden. Above this door hung a large chalk sketch of an old five-barred gate, being the identical study from nature, which, as Valentine imagined, was at that moment the special object of interest to Mat. “No, no! don’t trouble to get the sketch now,” said Zack, once more answering for his friend. “We are going out to get freshened up by a long walk, and can’t stop. Now then, Mat; what on earth are you staring at? The garden door, or the sketch of the five-barred gate?” “The picter, in course,” answered Mat, with unusual quickness and irritability. “It shall be taken down for you to look at close to-night,” said Mr. Blyth, delighted by the impression which the five-barred gate seemed to have produced on the new visitor. On leaving Mr. Blyth’s, young Thorpe and his companion turned down a lane partially built over, which led past Valentine’s back garden wall. This was their nearest way to the fields and to the high road into the country beyond. Before they had taken six steps down the lane, Mat, who had been incomprehensibly stolid and taciturn inside the house, became just as incomprehensibly curious and talkative all on a sudden outside it.