Fortunately for his
achievement the weather continued wonderfully fine and each successive day
brought like conditions of sunshine and color, light and air. This
circumstance enabled him to proceed rapidly, and another fact also
contributed to progress; the temperature kept high and the cow-byre,
wherein Barren stored his implements and growing picture, proved so
well-built and so snug withal that on more than one occasion he spent the
entire night there. Sweet brown bracken filled a manger, and of this he
pulled down sufficient quantities to make, with railway rugs, an ample bed.
The outdoor life appeared to suit his health well; some color had come to
his pale cheeks; he felt considerably stronger in body and mentally
invigorated by the strain of work now upon him.
But though he turned his back on his fellow-men they sought him out, and
rumors at length grew to a certainty that Barron was busy painting
somewhere on the cliffs beyond Mousehole. Everybody supposed he had
abandoned his ambition to get a portrait of Joan Tregenza; but one man was
in his confidence: Edmund Murdoch. The young artist had been useful to
Barron. On many occasions he tramped out from Newlyn with additions to the
scanty larder kept at the cow-byre. He would bring hard-boiled eggs,
sandwiches, bottles of soda-water and whisky; and once he arrived at six
o'clock in the morning with a pony cart in which was a little oil stove.
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