"Don't you do anything of the kind, Mac; you don't want any drops of red sealing wax spilt on that middle distance, or any blobs of white; only make it worse. All you need is a touch here and there of yellow-white against that purple haze. But you don't want to guess at it. This East River is a _fact_, not a _dream_. And it's right here under our eyes. Everybody knows it and everybody knows how it looks. If you want it true, the best thing for you to do is to go there to-morrow morning at daylight and wait until the sun gets to your angle. You fellows that insist on painting things out of your heads instead of following what is set down before you will run to seed like cabbages. Why you want to scoop up the emptyings of everybody's wash-basins, when it is so easy to get buckets of pure water fresh from nature's well, is what gets me." "Talks like an art critic," growled Pitkin. "And with as little sense," added Woods. "More like a plumber, I should think," remarked Lonnegan drily. "Only don't you go up on that hill at five o'clock in the morning, Mac, or you'll never finish that picture or anything else. Some thug will finish _you_. That's the worst hole on the river--regular den of thieves live under that hill. I came near being murdered there myself once." Lonnegan's statement caused a sensation. "You came near being murdered, you dear Lonny?" Mac asked nervously. "Yes." "When?" "Some three years ago." Boggs, who was still smarting under the contempt with which his suggestion had been received, now shouted in the voice of a newsboy selling an afternoon edition: "Full and graphic account of the hair-breadth escape of a great architect. Sit down, gentlemen, and listen to a tale that will clog your veins with dynamite and make goose shivers go up and down your spine. Here, Lonnegan, rest your immaculately upholstered body in this chair and tell us all about it. Put up your brushes, Mac; I'll help you wash 'em. Everybody draw up to the fire." (Here Boggs dropped into his own chair.) "The modern Moses is going to tell us how he was pulled out of the bulrushes and why he has an excuse for still walking around among his fellow-men instead of being tucked away in some comfortable cemetery on a hill under a mausoleum of his own designing. "Ladies and gentlemen"--Boggs was again on his feet, a ring in his voice like that of a showman--"it is my especial privilege, and one of the greatest honors of my life, to introduce to you this afternoon the distinguished architect, Mr. Archibald Perkins Lonnegan, who----" "Will you keep still!" cried Pitkin, putting both hands on Boggs's shoulder and forcing him into his chair. "Sit on him, Marny!" Mac by this time had laid his palette on his painting table and had moved to the fire. "You never told me anything about that, Lonny." "Well, don't know that I did; 'twas some time ago."