Nor did Bryan, Captain Ridgely's negro butler, fit less admirably into the pervasive atmosphere of fiction which enveloped the place. In the absence of his master, Bryan did the honors of the old house with a style which was not "put on," because it did not have to be put on--nature and a good bringing-up having supplied all needs in this respect. There was about him none of that affectation of being a graven image, which one so often notices in white butlers and footmen imported from Europe by rich Americans, and which, of all shams, is one of the most false and absurd, as carried out on both sides--for we pretend to think these functionaries the deft mechanisms, incapable of thought, that they pretend to be; yet all the time we know--and they know we know--that they see and hear and think as we do, and that, moreover, they are often enough observant cynics whose elaborate gentility is assumed for hire, like the signboard of a sandwich man. Bryan was without these artificial graces. His manner, in showing us the house, in telling us about the various portraits, indicated some true appreciation of the place and of its contents; and the air he wore of natural dignity and courtesy--of being at once acting-host and servitor--constituted as graceful a performance in a not altogether easy role as I have ever seen, and satisfied me, once for all, as to the verity of legends concerning the admirable qualities of old-time negro servants in the South. After tea, when fading twilight had deepened the shadows in the house, we went up the stairway, past the landing with its window containing the armorial bearings of the family in stained glass, and, achieving the upper hall, crossed to a great bedchamber, the principal guest room, and paused just inside the door. And now, because of what I am about to relate, I shall give the names of those who were present. We were: Dr. Murray P. Brush, A.B., Ph.D., acting Dean of Johns Hopkins University; Dr. John McF. Bergland of Baltimore; my companion, Wallace Morgan, illustrator; and myself. The light had, by this time, melted to a mere faint grayness sifting like mist through the many oblong panes of several large windows. Nevertheless I could discern that it was a spacious room, and from the color of it and certain shadowy lines upon the walls, I judged that it was paneled to the ceiling in white-painted wood. I am under the impression that it contained a fireplace, and that the great four-post bed, standing to the right of the doorway, was placed upon a low platform, a step or two above the floor--though of this I am not quite certain, the bulk of the bed and the dim light having, perhaps, deceived me. The rest of the furniture in the room was dark in color, and massed in heavy vague spots against the lighter background of the walls.