The room was large and lofty, but so crowded with the same species of lumber as that which he had seen below that there was little more than a passage, or strait, whereby he could approach his patient. Here, too, were cabinets of ebony inlaid with _pietra dura_; in one corner stood an Egyptian mummy—perchance a departed Pharaoh, whose guilt-burdened soul had shivered at the bar of Osiris six thousand years ago; while on the wall above him hung a grim picture—of the early German school—representing the flaying of a saint and martyr, hideously faithful to anatomy. The opposite wall was entirely covered by moth-eaten tapestry, upon which the fair fingers of mediæval chatelaines had depicted the Dance of Death. Gazing with wondering eyes round the room, Lucius beheld elaborately-carved arm-chairs in Bombay black wood, peacock mosquito-fans, sandal-wood caskets, poonah work, and ivory chessmen; lamps that had lighted Roman catacombs or burned on Pagan altars; Highland quaichs from which Charles Edward may have drunk the native usquebaugh; a Greek shield, of the time of Alexander, shaped like the back of a tortoise; a Chinese idol; a South Sea islander’s canoe. A hundred memories of lands remote, of ages lost in the midst of time, were suggested by this heterogeneous mass of property, which to the inexperienced eye of Lucius seemed more interesting than valuable. The old man’s bed stood in a corner near the fireplace—a small four-poster, with clumsily-carved columns, somewhat resembling that bedstead which the student of history gazes upon with awe in Mary Stuart’s bedchamber at Holyrood, thinking how often that fair head must have laid itself down there, weary of cark and care, and crown and royal robes, and false friends and falser lovers—a shabby antique bedstead, with ragged hangings of faded red silk. There was a fire in the grate, pinched like the grate below; a three-cornered chair of massive carved ebony, covered with stamped and gilded leather, stood beside it. Here sat the master of these various treasures, his long gray hair crowned with a black-velvet skullcap; his gaunt figure wrapped in a ragged damask dressing-grown, edged with well-worn fur; a garment which may have been coeval with the bedstead. ‘Good-morning,’ said Mr. Sivewright, looking up from his newspaper. ‘You look surprised at the furniture of my bedroom; not room enough to swing a cat, is there? But you see I don’t want to swing cats. When I get a bargain I bring it in here, and have it about me till I get tired of looking at it, and then Wincher and I carry it down-stairs to the general collection.’ ‘Wincher?’