_Yours faithfully,_ _Willoughby Gray Bagot._ _Messrs. Matthew & Scarlet,_ _Solicitors,_ _Serjeant’s Inn, London, E.C._ Bagot read over his letter with tightened lips. Then he copied it carefully and, slipping the original into an envelope, sealed, stamped and addressed this forthwith. As he turned it about, the crest on the back caught his eye—a rose in a mailed fist. For a moment he stared at it: then he turned and glanced at the same emblem cut in the stone of the aged mantelpiece. . . . Presently he sighed. “_Sic transit_,” he said shortly, and, clapping a hat on his head, rose and passed out of the room. It was true. The glory was passing. Very soon it would have passed. There had been a Gray Bagot at Chancery since Harry Plantagenet’s day. In fact, that terrible king had given a Bagot the estate in return for valour. That it was not his to give is beside the point. Men took what they could get in those days, as they do now. And now, Mr. Albert Harp was taking Chancery. Like the original Bagot, Mr. Harp owed his good fortune to his prowess in time of War. But, while Gray Bagot had won Chancery at the cost of an eye, an arm and a slash on the thigh, which only the bone stopped, Mr. Harp’s succession was due to a judicious administration of his business, which was that of a purveyor of pork. _Sic transit_ . . . Willoughby had done what he could. But when he came back from the War, things were in evil case. A cold rain of demands beat upon his diminished income; the stream of outgoings was like to burst its banks: over all, the cloud of a heavy mortgage, once no bigger than a man’s hand, was blotting out the heaven. Of his passionate love for Chancery, Willoughby took his capital and gambled upon the Exchange. The franc was bound to appreciate. . . . Mr. Harp’s offer was a bad one, as offers go. Chancery was a show place. Charles the First had stayed there, and Cromwell too. The latter had crossed the body of a Gray Bagot to gain admittance. Some of Chancery’s furniture had stood in the same corners for more than three hundred years. The library had been collected by a Bagot in the reign of Queen Anne. Mr. Harp’s offer was absurd. Still . . . Offers were hard to come by nowadays. Mr. Harp’s was the first that had been made in seven months. When all that had to be paid had been discharged, of the forty-five thousand there would remain five thousand pounds. This, safely invested, would bring in two hundred a year. And a man could live on that—even one who had been a Captain in His Majesty’s Household Brigade. _Sic transit_ . . . Willoughby posted his letter and then walked round the park, and in by the western gate. He passed about the lodge, marking its bulwarks. After a final look, he turned slowly away. “What a thought,” he said. “Two hundred and fifty a year and rent-free. If it comes off, I shall be on _panne_ velvet.”