“I can’t say, I don’t know; I certainly cannot see how it can be,” replied the host doubtfully. “I have tried in every way to solve the riddle, but I cannot even see how to make a beginning, The secret may be contained in the position of the stones, the shapes of the stones, or the color of the stones.” Alan faced round. “What do you mean by the color answering the riddle?” “It is just an idea I got from a man who is a theosophist. In what they—the theosophists I mean—call the aura of a human being, which can be seen by those gifted with astral sight, the colors all mean something.” “I don’t quite follow you, Mr. Sorley, although I have heard something of this sort from Dick. He believes in these occult things. Do you?” “I can’t say that I have looked into them,” rejoined Sorley in a careless manner. “I only attended to the matter so far as the meaning of colors was concerned—a kind of color alphabet as it were. Pink means affection, blue means religion, green sympathy, and so on. I applied the principle, but it wouldn’t work.” Fuller quite believed this, as he did not see how the principle in question could be applied. However, he was too engrossed in drawing the bird to go into the subject at the present moment, but promised himself to ask for a more thorough explanation of the color alphabet—as Mr. Sorley aptly called it—from Dick Latimer. Meantime he drew the outline of the peacock, filled in the details, being particularly careful as to the position of the stones in the tail, and then slowly colored every part in accordance with the original object. When finished he laid down his brush with a tired sigh and held out the sketch at arm’s length. Mr. Sorley restored the peacock to its chamois leather wrapping and to the cupboard, after which he returned to examine Alan’s artistic effort. “Very good, very good,” he said nodding, “you have done it very exactly, although the drawing is very stiff.” “Rather architectural isn’t it, sir? But the original is stiff also, and I am not drawing from an artistic point of view, but with the idea of getting an exact representation of the thing,” said Alan, and slipping the sketch into an envelope, he put it along with the paint-box into his pocket.