"A'm glad to be associated with ye in this melancholy duty, Harrison," he said. "Now we won't waste words. Miss Andriaovsky has told me precisely how matters stand. I had, as ye know, the honour to be poor Michael's close friend for a period of five years, and my knowledge of him is entirely at your disposal." I answered that I should be seriously handicapped without it. "Just so. It is Miss Andriaovsky's desire that we should pull together. Now, in the firrst place, what is your idea about the forrm the book should take?" "In the first place, if you don't mind," I replied, "perhaps we'd better run over together the things you've brought. The daylight will be gone soon." "Just as ye like, Harrison," he said, "just as ye like. It's all the same to me...." I cleared a space about my writing-table at the window, and we turned to the artistic remains of Michael Andriaovsky. I was astonished, first, at the enormous quantity of the stuff, and next at its utter and complete revelation of the man. In a flash I realised how superb that portion at least of the book was going to be. And Schofield explained that the work he had brought represented but a fraction of the whole that was at our disposal. "Ye'll know with what foolish generosity poor Michael always gave his things away," he said. "Hallard has a grand set; so has Connolly; and from time to time he behaved varry handsomely to myself. Artists of varry considerable talents both Hallard and Connolly are; Michael thought varry highly of their abilities. They express the deepest interest in the shape your worrk will take; and that reminds me. I myself have drafted a rough scenario of the forrm it appeared to me the 'Life' might with advantage be cast in. A purely private opinion, ye'll understand, Harrison, which ye'll be entirely at liberty to disregard...." "Well, let's finish with the work first," I said. With boards, loose sheets, scraps of paper, notes, studies, canvases stretched and stripped from their stretchers, we paved half the library floor, Schofield keeping up all the time a running fire of "Grand, grand! A masterpiece! A gem, that, Harrison!" They were all that he said, and presently I ceased to hear his voice. The splendour of the work issued undimmed even from the severe test of Schofield's praise; and I thought again with pride how I, I, was the only man living who could adequately write that "Life.".... "Aren't they grand? Aren't they great?" Schofield chanted monotonously. "They are," I replied, coming to a consciousness of his presence again. "But what's that?" Secretively he had kept one package until the last. He now removed its wrappings and set it against a chair. _"There!"_ he cried. "I'll thank ye, Harrison, for your opinion of _that!"_ It was the portrait Andriaovsky had refused to sell me--a portrait of himself.