made his greatness and now in turn threatened to limit its scope. The cabin to which he brought his guest was itself a reflection of Steele's whim. Fashioned by its original and unimaginative builders only as a shelter, with no thought of appearances, it remained, with its dark logs and white "chinking," a thing of picturesque beauty. Its generous stone chimneys and wide hearths were reminders of the ancient days. Across its shingled roof, the sunlight was spotted with shadows thrown down from beeches and oaks that had been old when the Indian held the country and the buffalo gathered at the salt licks. Vines of honeysuckle and morning-glory had partly preempted the walls. Inside was the odd mingling of artistic junk that characterizes the den of the painter. Saxon's enthusiasm had been growing that morning since the automobile had left the city behind and pointed its course toward the line of knobs. The twenty-mile run had been a panorama sparkling with the life of color, tempered with tones of richness and soft with haunting splendor. Forest trees, ancient as Druids, were playing at being young in the almost shrill greens of their leafage. There were youth and opulence in the way they filtered the sun through their gnarled branches with a splattering and splashing of golden light. Blossoming dogwood spread clusters of white amid endless shades and conditions of green, and, when the view was not focused into the thickness of woodland interiors, it offered leagues of yellow fields and tender meadows stretching off to soberer woods in the distance. Back of all that were the hills, going up from the joyous sparkle of the middle distance to veiled purple where they met the bluest of skies. Saxon's fingers had been tingling for a brush to hold and his lids had been unconsciously dropping, that his eyes might appraise the colors in simplified tones and values. At last, they had ensconced themselves, and a little later Saxon emerged from the cabin disreputably clad in a flannel shirt and briar-torn, paint-spotted trousers. In his teeth, he clamped a battered briar pipe, and in his hand he carried an equally battered sketching-easel and paint-box. Steele, smoking a cigar in a hammock, looked up from an art journal at the sound of a footstep on the boards. "Did you see this?" he inquired, holding out the magazine. "It would appear that your eccentric demi-god is painting in Southern Spain. He continues to remain the recluse, avoiding the public gaze. His genius seems to be of the shrinking type. Here's his latest sensation as it looks to the camera." Saxon took the magazine, and studied the half-tone reproduction.