stone-flagged floor.

"Jeeming Cristopher!"--so ran his lines--"thought that rattler was a
gin-u-ine one. Ding baste my skin if I didn't. Seemed to me I heard
him rattle. Look at the blamed, unconverted insect a-layin' under
that pear. Little more, and somebody would a-been snake-bit."

With these artful dodges, contributed by Lonney's faithful coterie,
with the sonorous Kinney perpetually sounding the picture's merits,
and with the solvent prestige of the pioneer Briscoe covering it
like a precious varnish, it seemed that the San Saba country could
not fail to add a reputation as an art centre to its well-known
superiority in steer-roping contests and achievements with the
precarious busted flush. Thus was created for the picture an
atmosphere, due rather to externals than to the artist's brush, but
through it the people seemed to gaze with more of admiration. There
was a magic in the name of Briscoe that counted high against faulty
technique and crude colouring. The old Indian fighter and wolf
slayer would have smiled grimly in his happy hunting grounds had he
known that his dilettante ghost was thus figuring as an art patron
two generations after his uninspired existence.

Came the day when the Senate was expected to pass the bill of
Senator Mullens appropriating two thousand dollars for the purchase
of the picture. The gallery of the Senate chamber was early
preempted by Lonny and the San Saba lobby. In the front row of
chairs they sat, wild-haired, self-conscious, jingling, creaking,
and rattling, subdued by the majesty of the council hall.

The bill was introduced, went to the second reading, and then