“The mother was Roman Catholic and the father a Protestant, the family to be divided in the way of the sons following the father and the daughters the mother. Colonel Talbot was nothing in particular, but when he was away visiting he would go to whatever church his hosts went to. I think it was in Toronto once he was at the Roman Catholic, when the priest spoke to him after the service and said he was glad to see him returning to the true faith. “Another time he was at church, somewhere in the country, with Sir Peregrine Maitland’s party, and was wearing the celebrated sheepskin coat which had for a hood the head of the beast, to be worn in bad weather, the wearer’s face covered and the eyes looking through the eyeholes. On this occasion the head was turned over the back of the collar part, in its usual place in fine weather or under cover. The text was that in which we were told to beware of a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and as the words were said Talbot got up, gravely shook himself, turned round so that the sheep’s head was in full view, and equally gravely sat down again. “His household furniture could not be called furniture at all; enough wooden chairs to sit on, and a table made of a couple of planks nailed to ‘sawhorses’ made the dining-room equipment when I knew him; but when the dinner was served the boards were covered with the finest damask, a white dinner service, good glass and silver. Geoffrey was as peculiar as his master, and once I heard Colonel Talbot ask him a question as he waited at table, and Geoffrey went to the cupboard, got what he wanted, put it on the table, went to the kitchen and returned again before answering his master’s question. “His nephew, Julius Airey, was disgusted with the place and his anomalous position in it, brought there as the heir and no definite understanding arrived at, and he was kicking his heels in idleness and uncertainty between nineteen and twenty-four. In one of his letters home he drew a picture, a dreadful caricature of the colonel, which afterwards in some inexplicable manner found its way back to Talbot and decided him _not_ to make Julius his heir; it showed the dining-room in its bareness, a wooden hook on the wall bearing a bridle, and his uncle in a chair by the fire, choosing the moment to depict him just after a coal had hopped into his uncle’s big gaping pocket and set it afire. Colonel Talbot was very unfair to Julius, inasmuch as he kept him there all those years and never told him that he had better look for his own way in the world, as he was not to be the heir after all.