Just at this time, as if by a miracle, a veritable God from the Machine, Vandover's lawyer, Mr.Field, found him an opportunity to earn some money.

For the first and only time in his life Vandover knew what it was to work for a living.

The work that Field secured for him was the work of painting those little pictures on the lacquered surface of iron safes, those little oval landscapes between the lines of red and gold lettering--landscapes, rugged gorges, ocean steamships under all sail, mountain lakes with sailboats careening upon their surfaces, the boat indicated by two little triangular dabs of Chinese white, one for the sail itself and the other for its reflection in the water.

Sometimes even he was called upon to paint other little pictures upon the sides of big express wagons--two horses, one white and the other bay, galloping very free in an open field, their manes and tails flying, or a bulldog, very savage, sitting upon a green and black safe, or the head of a mastiff with a spiked collar about his neck.
What with the pay for this sort of work and the interest of his bonds, Vandover managed to lead a haphazard sort of life, living about in cheap lodging-houses and cheap restaurants.

But he was never more than a second-class workman, and he was so irregular that he could never be depended upon.
The moment he began to paint again--even to paint such pitiful little pictures as these--the same familiar experience repeated itself, the unwillingness of his fingers, their failure to rightly interpret his ideas, the resulting crudity of his work, the sudden numbness in his brain, the queer, tense sensation behind his eyes.