On the north wall was the fireplace--wide, high, old-fashioned and warm--with a discoloured white marble mantelpiece, decorated with fat bewigged Georgian cupids. Above it hung an old cavalry sword with which my father had cut his way through the Russians at Inkermann. Close to the fireplace, and with its back to the book-shelves, stood my own especial chair--big, roomy, well worn--covered with dark red morocco, like the rest of the furniture. A reading-table stood in the corner beside it, and on the right hand was a bigger table, piled high with books and papers, cigars, bills and rubbish. There was a writing-table in one corner, at which I never wrote; a sofa covered with more literary lumber; two cabinets crammed with curiosities collected on my travels, tossed in with little attempt at arrangement; a card-table on which stood a quantity of old-fashioned silver, such as tall candlesticks, goblets, a punch-bowl and a massive last-century urn. A stuffed duck, a Dutch tankard, a pair of elk's horns, and a bust of Dante surmounted by a fox's brush, occupied the top of the book-shelves. A high plain fourfold screen, as dark as the rest of the time-worn furniture, hid the door; and close to the screen a dog-kennel, with the front taken out and replaced by a strong iron grating, formed the winter home of a large brown monkey, which I had bought at a sale with the fascinating reputation of being dangerous, but which had belied its character by allowing me to bring it home on my shoulders. To-to, so called for no better reason than that my collie, whose favourite resting-place was now well defined on the goatskin hearthrug, was named Ta-ta, had from our first introduction treated me with such marked tolerance that I, in my loneliness, had begun to feel a sort of superstitious fondness for the brute, and fancied I saw more reason and affection in his blinking brown eyes than in any of the Scotch pebbles which served as organs of vision to my Gaelic neighbours. When I first bought him it was mild enough for him to live in the yard; but when the weather grew cold, and he was brought into the kitchen, he got on so ill with the powers there that I had to take compassion upon him and them, and remove To-to to the study, where he justified his promotion by the reserve and gravity of his manners, his only marked foible being a furious jealousy of Ta-ta, whose resting-place was just beyond the utmost tether of the monkey's chain. Rarely did an evening pass without some skirmish between the two. Perhaps Ta-ta, seeing me smile over the book I was reading, and anxious to share my enjoyment, even if she could not understand the joke, would incautiously get up and wag her tail. Whereupon To-to would dash across the hearthrug and assist her, and much unpleasantness would follow, the dog barking, the monkey chattering, the master swearing--all three members of the menagerie trying to come off conqueror in the _melee_. Or else To-to would fall from the top of