Such men are human suns! They brighten and warm wherever they pass. Fools count them mad, till death wrenches open foolish eyes; they are not often called “my Lord,” * nor sung by poets when they die; but the hearts they heal, and their own are their rich reward on earth--and their place is high in heaven. * Sometimes thought. CHAPTER X. MR. MEADOWS lived in a house that he had conquered three years ago by lending money on it at fair interest in his own name. Mr. David Hall, the proprietor, paid neither principal nor interest. Mr. Meadows expected this contingency, and therefore lent his money. He threatened to foreclose and sell the house under the hammer; to avoid this Mr. Hall said, “Pay yourself the interest by living rent free in the house till such time as my old aunt dies, drat her, and then I'll pay your money. I wish I had never borrowed it.” Meadows acquiesced with feigned reluctance. “Well, if I must, I must; but let me have my money as soon as you can--” (aside) “I will end my days in this house.” It had many conveniences; among the rest a very long though narrow garden inclosed within high walls. At the end of the garden was a door which anybody could open from the inside, but from the outside only by a Bramah key. The access to this part of the premises was by a short, narrow lane, very dirty and very little used, because, whatever might have been in old times, it led now from nowhere to nowhere. Meadows received by this entrance one or two persons whom he never allowed to desecrate his knocker. At the head of these furtive visitors was Peter Crawley, attorney-at-law, a gentleman who every New Year's Eve used to say to himself with a look of gratified amazement--“Another year gone, and I not struck off the Rolls!!!” Peter had a Bramah key intrusted to him. His visits to Mr. Meadows were conducted thus: he opened the garden-gate and looked up at the window in a certain passage. This passage was not accessible to the servants, and the window with its blinds was a signal-book. Blinds up, Mr. Meadows out. White blind down, Mr. Meadows in. Blue blind down, Mr. Meadows in, but not alone. The same key that opened the garden-door opened a door at the back of the house which led direct to the passage above-mentioned. On the window-seat lay a peculiar whistle constructed to imitate the whining of a dog. Then Meadows would go to his book-shelves, which lined one side of the room, and pressing a hidden spring open a door that nobody ever suspected, for the books came along with it. To provide for every contingency, there was a small secret opening in another part of the shelves by which Meadows could shoot unobserved a note or the like into the passage, and so give Crawley instructions without dismissing a visitor, if he had one.