tenderest, the loving are the daring.'" There was enough of the South Carolinian of the Lowlands in Croyden, to appreciate the Past and to honor it. He might not know much concerning Hepplewhite nor the beauty of his lines and carving, and he might be wofully ignorant of his own ancestors, having been bred in a State far removed from their nativity, for he had never given a thought to the old things, whether of furniture or of forebears--they were of the inanimate; his world had to do only with the living and what was incidental to it. The Eternal Now was the Fetich and the God of Northumberland, all it knew and all it lived for--and he, with every one else, had worshipped at its shrine. It was different here, it seemed! and the spirit of his long dead mother, with her heritage of aristocratic lineage, called to him, stirring him strangely, and his appreciation, that was sleeping and not dead, came slowly back to life. The men in buff-and-blue, in small-clothes, in gray, the old commissions, the savour of the past that clung around them, were working their due. For no man of culture and refinement--nay, indeed, if he have but their veneer--can stand in the presence of an honorable past, of ancestors distinguished and respected, whether they be his or another's, and be unmoved. "And you say there are none to inherit all these things?" Croyden exclaimed. "Didn't the original Duval leave children?" The agent shook his head. "There was but one son to each generation, sir--and with the Colonel there was none." "Then, having succeeded to them by right of purchase, and with no better right outstanding, it falls to me to see that they are not shamed by the new owner. Their portraits shall remain undisturbed either by collectors or by myself. Moreover, I'll look up my own ancestors. I've got some, down in South Carolina and up in Massachusetts, and if their portraits be in existence, I'll add reproductions to keep the Duvals company. Ancestors by inheritance and ancestors by purchase. The two of them ought to keep me straight, don't you think?" he said, with a smile. IV PARMENTER'S BEQUEST Croyden, with Dick as guide and old Mose as forerunner and shutter-opener, went through the house, even unto the garret. As in the downstairs, he found it immaculate. Josephine had kept everything as though the Colonel himself were in presence. The bed linen, the coverlids, the quilts, the blankets were packed in trunks, the table-linen and china in drawers and closets. None of them was new--practically the entire furnishing antedated 1830, and much of them 1800--except that, here and there, a few old rugs of oriental weaves, relieved the bareness of the hardwood floors.