He rose from the table, bidding the servant to bring the coffee to the drawing-room.  With the same light, quick step that he ascended the flights in the store, he led the way downstairs, his face alive with the dramatic anticipation that it had worn when he took Jack out of the office to look down from the balcony of the court.

“Ah, we have something besides the store, Jack!” he was saying, in the very exultation of the pride of possession, as he went to the opposite side of the mantel from the mother’s portrait and turned on the reflector over a picture.

Jack saw a buccaneer under the brush of the gold and the shadows of Spain; a robust, ready figure on fighting edge, who seemed to say, “After you, sir; and, then, pardon me, but it’s your finish, sir!”

“It’s a Velasquez!” Jack exclaimed.

“And you knew that at a glance!” said his father.

“Why, yes!”

“Not many Velasquezes in America,” said the father, thinking, incidentally, that his son would not have to pay the dealers a heavy toll for an art education, while he revelled in a surprise that he was evidently holding back.

“Or many better Velasquezes than this, anywhere,” added Jack.  “What mastery!  What a gift from heaven that was vouchsafed to a human being to paint like that!”

He was in a spell, held no less by the painter’s art than by the subject.

“Absolutely a certified Velasquez, bought from the estate of Count Galting,” continued his father.  “I paid a cool two hundred and fifty thousand for it.  And that isn’t all, Jack, that isn’t all that you are going to drudge for as an apprentice in the delivery department.  I know what I am talking about.  I wasn’t fooled by any of the genealogists who manufacture ancestors.  I had it all looked up by four experts, checking one off against another.”

“Yes,” answered Jack, absently.  He had hardly heard his father’s words.  In fervent scrutiny he was leaning forward, his weight on the ball of the foot, the attitude of the man in the picture.

“And who do you think he is—­who?” pursued John Wingfield, Sr.

“A man who fought face to face with the enemy; a man whom men followed!  Velasquez caught all that!” answered Jack.

“That old fellow was a great man in his day—­a great Englishman—­and his name was John Wingfield!  He was your ancestor and mine!”

After a quick breath of awakening comprehension Jack took a step nearer the portrait, all his faculties in the throe of beaming inquiry of Senor Don’t Care and desert freedom, in the self-same, alert readiness of pose as the figure he was facing.

“They say I resemble him!” The father repeated that phrase which he had used in benignant satisfaction to many a guest, but now seeing with greedy eyes a likeness between his son and the ancestor deeper than mere resemblance of feature, he added:  “But you—­you, Jack, you’re the dead spit of him!”