On the opposite wall a good engraving of Lincoln was flanked, somewhat incongruously, by a photograph of a buxom young woman with a group of girls behind her—Mar’s wife in her school-teaching days, with her class. Besides these, an old view of the Lake of Geneva, a print of Cromwell, and on the wall behind Mar’s revolving chair, an engraved portrait, bearing underneath it the inscription: John W. Galbraith, President Rock Hill Mining Co. Even if these adornments were of a very mild description, they, at least, covered several feet of the marbled yellow paper that apparently had been chosen (and chosen a good while ago) to “go with” the hideous “grained” woodwork. That it did “go with” that peculiarly perverse soiling and smearing of inoffensive surfaces, may not be denied. It went far. It arrived at such a degree of success that all the little room irradiated a bilious yellowness “clawed” with muddy brown. The very atmosphere was not left as nature sent it in at the window. It halted upon the sill and changed color, like one who gets wind of ill news. The moment it penetrated beyond the holland blinds it turned sick and overflowed the room in dirty saffron. It may well be wondered why any creature who was not obliged to should come here. And yet the defeated-looking man at the window did not lack high companionship. Sunset and the rain, the call of the winds, clouds of majesty, and mists of silver, not these alone. Daydreams penetrated the sullen walls. Here, where the rudest emigrant would not long abide, fair visions made themselves at home—“exultations, agonies”—a field here for the unconquerable mind no more unfit than many another for the long battle men call life. On this particular July afternoon, Nathaniel Mar had no sooner shut out one order of disturbance, than another penetrated the room from a different direction. “Sigma!” a loud, clear voice was calling from the region of the stairs. “Sigma,” and again, “Sigma! Have you set the table? Sigma-a-a!” Nathaniel Mar wrote on. The door opened suddenly and in came a brisk, rather handsome, dark-eyed woman, with an infant on her arm. Singularly enough the child seemed to be as little interrupted in its occupation of sleeping as the father in his writing. There were certain sounds that both were inured to. Among others, Mrs. Mar calling “Sigma,” or “Kate,” or “Jane.” But when she stopped short near the threshold and asked: “Where is that girl?” Mar, without raising his eyes from his paper, made a little motion toward the door he had just shut. “I should think,” he said, quietly, “she was probably breaking up the kitchen stove.” Before he finished, Mrs. Mar had opened the other door, and again called “Sigma!”