Barney was a broad-shouldered, good-natured giant, who towered over his shrinking father as the Monument towers over the nearest lamp-post. He was hail-fellow well-met, and could not shake hands like an ordinary mortal, but must bring down his great paw with an over-shoulder motion, as if he were throwing a cricket-ball, and, after the resounding whack of palm on palm, he would crunch the hand he held until its owner winced. Friends of the young fellow got into the habit, on meeting him, of placing their hands behind them and saying, “I’m quite well, thank you, Barney,” whereupon Barney laughed and smote them on the shoulder, which, though hard to bear, was the lesser of two evils. “Boisterous brute,” his comrades said behind his back, but the energetic shoulder-blow or hand-clasp merely meant that Barney was very glad indeed to meet a friend, and to let the friend know that although he was very poor and Barney very rich this circumstance need not make the slightest difference between them. It is possible that in the far West, or in the Australian bush, where muscle counts for something, there was a place yawning for Barney; perhaps there was a place for him even in London, but if there was, fate and Barney’s own inclinations removed him from it as far as possible. Barney was an artist; that is to say, he painted, or rather he put certain colours on canvas. For some years Barney had been the amazement of Julian’s school in Paris. He had a suite of rooms at the Grand Hotel, and he drove to the school in the Rue du Dragon every morning with a coachman and footman, the latter carrying Barney’s painting kit, while the former sat in a statuesque position on the box with his whip at the correct angle. Of course the art students were not going to stand that sort of thing, so they closed the gates one day and attacked the young man in a body. Barney at first thought it was fun, for he did not understand the language very well, and his good-natured roar sounded loud over the shrill cries of his antagonists. He reached for them one by one, placed them horizontally in a heap, then he rolled them over and over, flattening any student who attempted resurrection with a pat of his gigantic paw. Whatever admiration they may have had for art at Julian’s, they certainly had a deep respect for muscle, and so left Barney alone after that. He invited them all to dinner at the Grand Hotel, and they came. When his meteoric career as an art student in Paris was completed, he set himself up in an immense studio in Chelsea. The studio was furnished regardless of expense; there was everything in it that a studio ought to have--rich hangings from the East, tiger-skins from India, oriental rugs, ancient armour, easels of every pattern, luxurious lounges covered with stuffs from Persia. “There,” cried Barney to Hurst Haldiman, with a grand sweep of his hand: “what do you think of that?”