"Yes, he can," I replied. "All great artists are. Mind, I don't pretend that Mr. Carville is a great artist. I merely state the fact that he has one of their attributes. I account for it this way. We have here a man of undeniable powers but limited ambition. At certain periods in his life he has been crossed by his remarkable brother, a man whom we now know to have not only brain-power, but will-power. This brother has impressed himself upon our neighbour's imagination. You noticed almost admiration in his voice at times as he spoke of his brother? It has been his whim, therefore, to accentuate as much as possible the difference between them. He has, moreover, cultivated the habit of reticence. Thrown by his profession among men of shrewd wit but imperfect delicacy of mind, he has kept himself to himself. In the course of years it has been almost necessary for him to speak. I can imagine him, a man of quick perceptions, and no mean gift of expression, finding silence becoming an agony. Much brooding has bitten the real and fanciful details of his life into his mind. He has, quite by accident, discovered in us a singularly acceptable audience. Without conscious premeditation he has told us his story. Every narrator of the most trivial incident can induce you to listen for something naive and individual in his utterance. Most of us disperse this quality over our days. Mr. Carville has secreted it, distilled it to a quintessence, and the result is--well, something in his tone and manner quite unusual." "Yes, that's all right enough," assented Mac, "but I still don't quite see how his brother couples-up with that chap Cecil wrote about." "Well, I don't either," I replied, "but you must remember that Mr. Carville has told us so far only of the past. In his narrative he is not married. That must be at least eight years ago, a long time in the life of a man like his brother." "I'll write to Cecil," said Bill suddenly, with one of her flashes. "Wouldn't that be a good plan?" "Excellent!" I exclaimed. "We ought to have thought of that before. He will be tremendously interested." This was a true prophecy. Some three weeks later, on a day in the middle of November, we received a bulky letter with a Wigborough postmark on a two-cent stamp. The excess, I recall, was nine cents, gladly paid by me while Bill was tearing off the end of the envelope. "Yes," she said, scanning the sheets quickly, "it seems to be. Here----" We adjourned to the studio. Mac seated himself before a half-finished cover for the Christmas Number of _Payne's Monthly_, Bill took up a leather collar-bag destined to be Cecil's Yule-tide present, and I began to read. "High Wigborough, Essex.