The old man looked round his storehouse with a smile of triumph, holding aloft his single candle, every object showing strangely, and casting uncanny shadows in that feeble light, he himself not the least curious figure in the Rembrandtesque picture. He looked like some enchanter, who, at a breath, had called these things into being. ‘You astound me!’ exclaimed Lucius, looking about him with unaffected wonder. ‘You spoke some time ago of having saved the remnant of your stock; but you have here a collection larger than I should have supposed any dealer in curiosities would care to amass, even in the full swing of his business.’ ‘Perhaps,’ answered Mr. Sivewright with a dreamy air. ‘For the mere purposes of trade—for trade upon the nimble-ninepence system—there is no doubt too much. But these things have accumulated since I left off business. The passion for collecting them was not to be put away as easily as I put up my shutters with the expiry of a long lease. My harpy of a landlord asked a rent so exorbitant, that I preferred cutting short a successful trade to pandering to his greed. True that the situation had increased in value during the last twenty-one years of my residence; but I declined to toil for another man’s profit. I turned my hack upon Bond-street, determined to take life quietly in future. I found this old house—to be let cheap, and roomy enough to hold my treasures. Since that time I have amused myself by attending all the great sales, and a good many of the little ones. I have been to Paris, Brussels, Antwerp—and farther afield—on special occasions. My collection has grown upon me—it represents all I possess in the world, all that I can ever leave to my descendants. As I told you, I anticipate that as the value of money decreases, and the age grows more artistic, the value of these specimens, all relics of departed arts, will be multiplied fourfold.’ ‘A wise investment, in that case,’ replied Lucius; ‘but if the age should have touched its highest point of luxurious living, if the passion for splendid surroundings, once the attribute only of a Buckingham or a Hertford, now the vice of the million, should work its own cure, and give place to a Spartan simplicity, how then?’ ‘My collection would most likely be purchased by the State,’ said the old man coolly; ‘a destiny which I should infinitely prefer to its disintegration, however profitable. _Then_, Mr. Davoren, the name of Homer Sivewright would go down to posterity linked with one of the noblest Museums ever created by a single individual.’ ‘Pardon me,’ said Lucius; ‘but your name Homer—is that a family or merely a Christian name?’