But help was there none. His fate was fixed. He was dried with a
drench of turpentine, hastily clothed in a coat of copal, and here
he yet was fully aware of all his misery, was being borne away
upon the great board out of doors and handed to the gardener. For
the master was a hasty and ardent man, and had been stung into
impatience by the slaughter of some favorite blue thrushes in his
ilex trees that day, and so in his haste had chosen to do
journeyman's work himself. Lampblack was carried out of the studio
for the last time, and as the door closed on him he heard all the
colors laughing, and the laugh of little Rose Madder was highest
of all as she cried to Naples Yellow, who was a dandy and made
court to her: "Poor old ugly Deposit! He will grumble to the owls
and the bats now!"

The door shut, shutting him out forever from all that joyous
company and palace of fair visions, and the rough hands of the
gardener grasped him and carried him to the edge of the great
garden, where the wall overlooked the public road, and there
fastened him on high with a band of iron round the trunk of a
tree.

That night it rained heavily, and the north wind blew, and there
was thunder also. Lampblack, out in the storm without his tin
house to shelter him, felt that of all creatures wretched on the
face of the earth there was not one so miserable as he.

A signboard! Nothing but a signboard!

The degradation of a color, created for art and artists, could not
be deeper or more grievous anywhere. Oh, how he sighed for his tin