the master's picture with one of his own.

All pleaded ignorance until the master reached the blond-haired Van Dyck.
The boy made a clean breast of it all, save that he refused to reveal the
names of his accomplices.

"Then you painted the picture alone?"

"Yes," came the firm answer that betokened the offender was resolved on
standing the consequences.

The master relieved the strained tension by a laugh, and declared that he
had only discovered the work was not his own by perceiving that it was a
little better than he could do. Accidents are not always unlucky--this
advanced young Van Dyck at once to the place of first assistant to Peter
Paul Rubens.

* * * * *

Commissions were pouring in on Rubens. With him the tide was at flood. He
had been down to Paris and had returned in high spirits with orders to
complete that extensive set of pictures for Marie de Medici; he also had
commissions from various churches; and would-be sitters for portraits
waited in his parlors, quarreling about which should have first place.

Van Dyck, his trusted first lieutenant, lived in his house. The younger
man had all the dash, energy and ambition of the older one. He caught the
spirit of the master, and so great was his skill that he painted in a way
that thoroughly deceived the patrons; they could not tell whether Rubens
or Van Dyck had done the work.