Page:Wild folk - Samuel Scoville.djvu/90

68 "Hey! stop right where you be!" shouted the old man. "Another step an' I'll shoot," he went on, aiming the shovel which he had in his hand directly at the distressed artist's head, and trying not to breathe.

De Haven halted in his tracks.

"But—but—I require assistance," he pleaded.

"You sure do," agreed his landlord; "somethin' tells me so. Hustle over back of the smoke-house and get your clothes off an' I'll join you in a minute."

Mark hurried into the house, and was out again almost immediately with a large bottle of benzine, a wagon-sponge, a calico shirt, and a pair of overalls. As he came around the corner, the sight of the artist posing all pink and white against the smoke-house, with a pile of discarded clothes at his feet, was too much for the old man, and he cackled like a hen.

"Darned if you don't look like one of them fauns you're all the time paintin'," he gasped.

"Shut up!" snapped the artist. "You fix me up right away, or I'll put these clothes on again and walk through every room in your house."

This threat brought immediate action, and a few moments later an expensive and artistic suit of clothes reposed in a lonely grave back of Mark's smoke-house, where they remain even to this day. Thereafter the artist, scrubbed with benzine until he smelt like a garage, left Cornwall forever. He was wearing a mackintosh of his own. Everything else belonged to Mark.