The room was about twenty feet square. It had been a part of the laundry when the building was a hotel. The walls, from the floor to the low ceiling, appeared to be hung with a strange, dim tapestry. A second glance convinced Marcus Wilkeson that this seeming tapestry was the panorama, which was fastened on stretchers along three sides of the room, and rolled up in a corner as fast as completed. At the farther end of the room, barely visible through the smoke, was the figure of a man in a torn and dirty dressing gown, and an enormous black felt hat with a huge turn-up brim, of the kind supposed to be worn by the bandits of the Pyrenees. The back of the man was turned to Marcus Wilkeson, and he was making rapid dabs on the canvas with a long brush, frequently dipping into one of a series of pails or pans which stood on the floor by his side. He was smoking and humming the operatic air at the same time; and he pulled his great slouched hat farther over his eyes, as a signal for impertinent curiosity to keep its distance. Wesley Tiffles whispered something about the eccentricities of genius, and then said: "Mr. Patching. Allow me. Mr. Wilkeson. A capitalist, who thinks of taking a small interest in the panorama. Confidential, of course." The artist turned round during these remarks, and presented the original of a portrait which Marcus remembered to have seen--dressing gown, hat, and all--in a small print-shop window in the Sixth Avenue. Touching the face he might have had doubt, but there was no mistaking the pattern of the dressing gown and the amazing hat. He also had a faint recollection of the thin face, the Vandyke beard, and the long, tangled hair at Mrs. Slapman's, on New Year's, but was not positive as to their identity. Mr. Patching's individuality lay chiefly in his hat. The artist placed a moist hand, with one long finger nail like a claw, at the disposal of Marcus Wilkeson. The latter gentleman shook the member feebly, and distinctly felt the sharp edge of the long finger nail in his palm. It was an unpleasant sensation. "Happy to meet a _confidential_ friend of Tiffles's," said Patching. "Painting panoramas is not exactly what I have been used to. An artist's reputation is his capital in trade, you know." He spoke slowly and languidly, as if hope and happiness were quite dead within him, and he had consented to live on only for the good of high Art. "I understand," said Marcus. "The secret shall be inviolate." "Nothing but my old friendship for Tiffles here could possibly have induced me to undertake the job. My enemies--and I have them, ha! ha!" (he said this bitterly)--"would like nothing better to say of Patching, than that he had got down to the panorama line of business. It would be a pretty piece of scandal." "My lips are sealed, sir. But it strikes me, as a casual observer, that there is nothing to be ashamed of in this beautiful work of art." Marcus Wilkeson had the amiable vice of flattery.