“Gerard Dows, and Jansens, and such like?” resumed Merl; “I understand: a mellow brown tint makes them, just as a glossy white satin petticoat makes a Terburg. Mr. Crow, you 've caught a Tartar,” said he, with a grin. “There's not a man in Europe can detect a copy from the original sooner than him before you. Now seven out of every eight of these here are veritable 'croûtes,'—what we call 'croûtes,' sir,—things sold at Christie's, and sent off to the Continent to be hung up in old châteaux in Flanders, or dilapidated villas in Italy, where your exploring Englishman discovers them by rare good luck, and brings them home with him as Cuyps or Claudes or Vandykes. I'll undertake,” said he, looking around him,—“I'll undertake to furnish you with a gallery, in every respect the duplicate of this, for—let me see—say three hundred pounds. Now, Mr. Crow,” said Merl, taking a chair, and spreading out his legs before the fire, “will you candidly answer me one question?”
“Tell me what it is,” said Crow, cautiously.
“I suppose by this time,” said Merl, “you are tolerably well satisfied that Herman Merl is not very easily duped? I mean to say that at least there are softer fellows to be found than the humble individual who addresses you.”
“I trust there are, indeed,” said the other, sighing, “or it would be a mighty poor world for Simmy Crow and the likes of him.”
“Well, I think so too,” said Merl, chuckling to himself. “The wide-awake ones have rather the best of it. But, to come back to my question, I was simply going to ask you if the whole of the Martin estate—house, demesne, woods, gardens, quarries, farms, and fisheries—was not pretty much of the same sort of thing as this here gallery?”
“How? What do you mean?” asked Crow, whose temper was barely, and with some difficulty, restrainable.
“I mean, in plain words, a regular humbug,—that's all! and no more the representative of real value than these daubs here are the works of the great masters whose names they counterfeit.”
“Look here, sir,” said Crow, rising, and approaching the other with a face of angry indignation, “for aught I know, you may be right about these pictures. The chances are you are a dealer in such wares,—at least you talk like one,—but of the family that lived under this roof, and whose bread I have eaten for many a day, if you utter one word that even borders on disrespect,—if you as much as hint at—”
What was to be the conclusion of Mr. Crow's menace we have no means of recording, for a servant, rushing in at the instant, summoned the artist with all speed to Miss Martin's presence. He found her, as he entered, with flushed cheeks and eyes flashing angrily, in one of the deep recesses of a window that looked out upon the lawn.
“Come here, sir,” cried she, hurriedly,—“come here, and behold a sight such as you scarcely ever thought to look upon from these windows. Look here!” And she pointed to an assemblage of about a hundred people, many of whom were rudely armed with stakes, gathered around the chief entrance of the castle. In the midst was a tall man, mounted upon a wretched horse, who seemed from his gestures to be haranguing the mob, and whom Crow speedily recognized to be Magennis of Barnagheela.