His studio--in anticipation of his coming trip to Europe, and subsequent change of residence--he had pretty well dismantled, having packed away in dark closets and camphor-chests, the most part of such goods and chattels as dust or moth can corrupt. Little, indeed, was left out, save three or four chairs, a life-size lay-figure stripped of its draperies, an easel or two, and a few time-blackened plaster casts fastened to the wall. But over in one corner there was heaped up an assortment of miscellaneous odds and ends, the accumulation of half a dozen years, which, now, as his eye noted it, Elias remembered, he had meant to overhaul, with a view to laying aside whatever he should think worth keeping, and consigning the rest to the rag-and-bottle man. In the hurry and excitement of the past few days, however, he had forgotten all about it. For a little while Elias stood still, blinking in the new-made gas-light, and gazing rather vacantly at this old lumber-pile. Then, suddenly, a gleam as of inspiration brightening his features, “What time,” he asked himself, “could be better than the present? If I go to bed, I shall only toss about, without sleeping; whereas, if I do this, it will be an improvement upon sitting idle, and brooding, any how.” With which, straightway, he whipped off his coat, drew up a chair, and, not incurious as to what long-lost objects he might possibly unearth, started upon the forgotten task. Paint-rags, besmeared with a thousand colors; torn canvases, bearing half-finished, half-begun, or half-obliterated studies; paint-tubes, half-emptied, in which the remaining paint had congealed, or “fatted”; worn-out brushes, broken palettes, shattered maul-sticks, fragments of old casts and ornaments in plaster or terra-cotta; letters without envelopes, envelopes without letters; newspapers, pamphlets, exhibition catalogues, magazines, circulars, tailor's bills, cracked bottles, cigarette-stumps, cast-off gloves, pocket handkerchiefs, cravats; all sheeted over with fine, black dust, and all exhaling a musty, oily odor; these were the elements that predominated, and most of these Elias tossed pell-mell to the middle of the floor, for the maid to carry away in the morning. To divert one's thoughts from some persistent and exasperating topic, it is a commonplace, there is nothing like busying one's fingers; manual exercise being the surest means to the end of mental rest. Pretty soon Elias's late encounter with his uncle had sunken out of mind--only occasionally, for brief intervals, to struggle up, and agitate the surface--and agreeably interested in his present occupation, he was whistling softly to himself, indifferent alike to the perspiration that bathed his forehead, to the dust that penetrated his nostrils, and to the dirt that took lodgment upon his hands. Meanwhile, the thunder and lightning had ceased, and the rain had settled into a steady drizzle.