"'But you have rich friends,' he persisted. 'I know it by your face; so you don't fool me.'
"He then made a sign for me to follow them, so I had to tramp higher and higher up into the mountains, till I was ready to drop, while these well trained mountaineers leapt from crag to crag with the agility of a chamois, till they reached a cave, where they halted."
"There, Helen, run along," said Mr. Oldstone, as he had got thus far. "There's your mother calling you."
Off rushed Helen to her mother, who was waiting for her at the door of the kitchen.
"Come, girl," cried Dame Hearty, "I can't think what you find to talk about with Mr. Oldstone every day. You are quite losing your head. Now, set to work, for we are terribly behind-hand."
The door once closed upon Helen, our antiquary read his friend's letter slowly through to the end. It gave an elaborate account of our artist's experience with the brigands, which we need not relate. Stay!—here was something at the end of the letter, marked "Private," that promised to be interesting. What could it be?
"(Private.)—I must now touch upon a subject which causes me the greatest anxiety. A report has reached me through an artist friend, who was staying on a visit to Lord Landborough, who, you will remember, bought my picture entitled 'The Landlord's Daughter.' Amongst other visitors at his country seat who were there at the time was one Lord Scampford, a young sprig of nobility, rich, accomplished, but of infamous character; a gamester, and a profligate of the first water, who had become so enamoured of my portrait of Helen, then hanging on the walls of the Academy, that in his cups he swore, by Gumdragon, that he would search the world over to find out the original, and that, willy-nilly, he would make her his paramour. Likewise, he would shoot any man dead who dared to stand in his way. Turning to my friend, he asked him if he knew the painter of the work: and upon his answering in the affirmative, he next asked him if he knew the model who had sat for the picture. This my friend was unable to tell him, as he was ignorant himself who it was. He then asked for my address, and being informed I lived in Rome, he at once set out for Italy, and, in fact, arrived here, and called upon me at my studio, but was denied admittance, as I was then laid up with the fever. After I had recovered, I heard that he had been the round of all the studios, and that of every artist he had been asking if, perchance, they could tell him where I had got my model from. Not one of them knew. Shortly after his arrival I heard that he had received a letter which necessitated his immediate return to England.
"This letter, it seems, was from his valet, a big powerful man, who generally accompanied him as his bully, and who aids him in his nefarious schemes. This man he had left behind him in England, with orders to scour the country for miles round about London, and to inform himself at every wayside inn, if the original of the picture on the Academy walls lived there. For a long time his search was fruitless. At last chance came to his aid. On one of his visits to the Royal Academy, just to refresh his memory of the features in the picture, he overheard a broadbacked old farmer, just up from the country, say to his wife,
"'Why, dash my wig, Sally, if here ain't the face of dear little Helen Hearty, daughter of my old friend, Jack Hearty, as keeps the 'Headless Lady,' at the cross-roads.'
"Upon hearing this, the valet stepped forward. 'Do I understand you to say that you know the original of this portrait?' he asked.