“There, that's good!” cried he, turning to a small unfinished sketch in oils.
“I often wondered who did it,” cried Crow.
“That! Why, can you doubt, sir? That's a bit of Vandyke's own. It was one of the hundred and fifty rough things he threw off as studies for his great picture of St. Martin parting his cloak.”
“I'm glad to hear you say so,” said Crow, in delight. “I felt, when I looked at it, that it was a great hand threw in them colors.”
“You call this a Salvator Rosa, don't you?” said Merl, as he stood before a large piece representing a bandit's bivouac in a forest, with a pale moonlight stealing through the trees.
“Yes, that we do,” said Crow, stoutly.
“Of course, it's quite sufficient to have blended lights, rugged foregrounds, and plenty of action to make a Salvator; but let me tell you, sir, that it's not even a copy of him. It is a bad—ay, and a very bad—Haemlens,—an Antwerp fellow that lived by poor facsimiles.”
“Oh dear, oh dear!” cried Crow, despairingly. “Did I ever hear the like of this!”
“Are these your best things, Mr. Crow?” said Merl, surveying the room with an air of consummate depreciation.
“There are others. There are some portraits and a number of small cabinet pictures.”