It was of a water-mill, old, thatched, and with an unprotected wheel, like the one in the valley below. Some gnarled willows stretched across the water, whose trunks seemed hardly less time-worn and rotten than the wheel below. This foreground subject was in shadow, and strongly drawn, but beyond it, in the sunlight, lay a bit of delicate distance, on the rising ground of which stood one of those small wooden windmills known as Post-mills. An old woman and a child were just coming into the shade, and passing beneath a wayside shrine. What in the picture took Jan’s fancy it is impossible to say, but he gazed at it with exclamations of delight. The Cheap Jack saw that it was certain to be bought, and he raised the price accordingly. Mrs. Lake felt the same conviction, and began to try at least to get a good bargain. “’Tis a terr’ble old frame,” said she. “There be no gold left on’t.” And no more there was. “What do you say?” screamed the Cheap Jack, with his hand to his ear, and both a great deal too close to Mrs. Lake’s face to be pleasant. “’Tis such an old frame,” she shouted, “and the gold be all gone.” “Old!” cried the hunchback, scowling; “who says I sell old things? Every picter in that lot’s brand new and dirt cheap.” “The gold be rubbed off,” screamed Mrs. Lake in his ear. “Brighten it up, then,” said the Cheap Jack. “Gold ain’t paint; gold ain’t paper; rub it up!” and, suiting the action to the word, he rubbed the dirty old frame vigorously with the dirty sleeve of his smock. “It don’t seem to brighten it, nohow,” said Mrs. Lake, looking nervously round; but neither the miller nor George was to be seen. “Real gold allus looks like this in damp weather,” said the Cheap Jack. “Hang it up in a warm room, dust it lightly every morning with a dry handkerchief, an’ it’ll come out that shining you’ll see your face in it. And when summer comes, cover it up in yaller gauze to keep off the flies.” Mrs. Lake looked wistfully at the place the Cheap Jack had rubbed, but she had no redress, and saw no way out of her hobble but to buy the picture. When the bargain was completed, the Cheap Jack fell back into his oiliest manner; it being part of his system not only to bully at the critical moment, but to be very civil afterwards, so as to leave an impression so pleasant on the minds of his lady customers that they could hardly do other than thank him for his promise to call again shortly with “bargains as good as ever.” The Cheap Jack was a man of many voices. The softness of his parting words to Mrs. Lake, “I’d go three mile out of my road, ma’am, to call on a lady like you,” had hardly died away, when he woke the echoes of the plains by addressing his horse in a very different tone.