



Produced by Al Haines









A LIKELY STORY


BY

WILLIAM DE MORGAN



LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
1911




_All rights reserved_




DEDICATED TO
THE SCIENTIFIC ENQUIRER




CONTENTS


CHAPTER I

A good deal about a box of matches.  Concerning a married
couple, whom anyone would have thought quarrelsome, to
listen to them.  Of the difficulty with which the lady
housekept, and how her husband was no help at all.  But
they went to the Old Water Colour.  How Sairah only
just wiped gently over a tacky picture, and Mr.  Aiken said
God and Devil.  Of the plural number.  Of a very pretty
girl, but dressy, and her soldier lover, and how Mrs. Aiken
was proper.  Of her mystical utterance about the young
lady.  How Mr.  Aiken sought for an explanation from
Sairah, and created a situation.  How his wife went to her
Aunt Priscilla, at Athabasca Villa, and cried herself to
sleep


CHAPTER II

How a little old gentleman was left alone in a Library, in front
of the picture Sairah had only just wiped gently.  How he
woke up from a dream, which went on.  The loquacity of
a picture, and how he pointed out to it its unreality.  The
Artist's name.  There was plenty of time to hear more.
The exact date of Antiquity.  The Rational way of
accounting for it


CHAPTER III

The Picture's tale.  It was so well painted--that was why it
could hear four hundred years ago.  How its painter
hungered and thirsted for its original, and _vice versa_.  How
old January hid in a spy-hole,