That one of their old good-natured passages at arms was coming became instantly apparent--tilts that every one enjoyed, for Herbert talked as he modelled--never any fumbling about for a word; never any uncertainty nor vagueness--always a direct and convincing sureness of either opinion or facts, and always the exact and precise truth. He would no sooner have exaggerated a statement than he would have added a hair's-breadth of clay to a muscle. Louis, on the other hand, talked as he painted--with the same breeze and verve and the same wholesome cheer and sanity which have made both himself and his brush so beloved. When Herbert, therefore, took up the cudgels for the cooked pigeon, none of us were surprised to hear the hilarious painter break out with: "Stop talking such infernal rot, Herbert, and move the matches this way. How could there be another side? What do you suppose beef and mutton were put into the world for except to feed the higher animal, man?" "But _is_ man higher?" returned Herbert quietly, in his low, incisive voice, passing Louis the box. "I know I'm the last fellow in the world, with my record as a hunter--and I'm sometimes ashamed of it--to advance any such theory, but as I grow older I see things in a different light, and the animal's point of view is one of them." "Pity you didn't come to that conclusion before you plastered your studio with the skins of the poor devils you murdered," he chuckled, winking at Lemois. "That was because I didn't know any better--or, rather, because I didn't _think_ any better," retorted Herbert. "When we are young, we delude ourselves with all sorts of fallacies, saying that things have always been as they are since the day of Nimrod; but isn't it about time to let our sympathies have wider play, and to look at the brute's side of the question? Take a captive polar bear, for instance. It must seem to him to be the height of injustice to be hunted down like a man-eating tiger, sold into slavery, and condemned to live in a steel cage and in a climate that murders by slow suffocation. The poor fellow never injured anybody; has always lived out of everybody's way; preyed on nothing that robbed any man of a meal, and was as nearly harmless, unless attacked, as any beast of his size the world over. I know a case in point, and often go to see him. He didn't tell me his story--his keeper did--though he might have done so had I understood bear-talk as well as Louis understands pigeon-English," and a challenging smile played over the speaker's face. "You ought to have stepped inside and passed the time of day with him. They wouldn't have fed him on anything but raw sculptor for a month." Herbert fanned his fingers toward Louis in good-humored protest, and kept on, his voice becoming unusually grave.