"Rockmount has now been my home for a couple of years, and I have no desire to leave it. Here I live in the utmost seclusion with my books and a few scientific instruments. An act of the blackest treachery drove me from the world, a ruined man, bankrupt in hope, in friendship, in means, with not one illusion left of all those with which----but I weary you with my egotistic maunderings. Besides, the hour is late--I cannot expect you to be such a night-owl as I am--and doubtless you are hungering for your bed." Nevill protested, a little mendaciously, that he was not at all tired. Tired he was, but not sleepy. He would willingly have sat out the rest of the night with his singular host. Presently Mr. Ellerslie, having finished the remainder of his grog, said, "By the way, towards which point of the compass are you desirous of bending your steps in the morning?" "If I could only find my way to the Whinbarrow road, I should know where I was." "One of my fellows shall go with you and not leave you till he has put you into it. You have but to name your own hour for breakfast, and Mrs. Dobson will have it ready for you." He rose, as intimating that the moment for retiring had come. A light was burning in the entrance-hall, and two bed-candles had been placed in readiness, one of which Mr. Ellerslie proceeded to light. At the foot of the stairs he held out his hand. It was a long, lean, sinewy hand, Nevill could not help noticing, and not at all like that of a man on whom age had in other respects set its unmistakable seal. "I am one of those mortals who have an uncomfortable habit of turning night into day," remarked the elder man as he clasped his guest's fingers. "I usually sit up till dawn is in the sky, and, as a consequence, I sleep till late in the forenoon. As you tell me that you want to be on your way at an early hour, I had better, perhaps, say both goodnight and goodbye here and now----Ah, a mouse!" Frank Nevill gave a backward spring, and a little frightened cry escaped his lips. Next moment the blood rushed to his face, and he felt as if he could have bitten his tongue out for betraying him as it had. But Mr. Ellerslie seemed to have noticed nothing. "We have not many such vermin, I am happy to say," he resumed after a momentary pause. "But these old country houses are seldom altogether free of them." And so presently they parted. Mrs. Dobson was awaiting Nevill at the head of the stairs. "Your room, sir, is the third door on the left down the corridor," she said. "At what hour would you be pleased to like breakfast?" "Will eight o'clock be too early?" "No hour you may name will be either too early or too late, sir." "Then eight o'clock let it be." Thereupon the woman curtsied, wished him a respectful goodnight, and left him.