Yes. He was silent enough while the affair was in progress. That odd, weird, inanimate affair! How little any of us suspected the nature of the struggle that was going on behind his constantly sported oak. It was in this way. Let me begin, as he began, with his introduction to the brown, burly god which gained possession of him. Harrowsmith asked him to lunch one Saturday. After lunch he brought out cigars; he had money and could afford them daily. To him cigar-smoking was a habit, not an occasional indulgence. The last course of the luncheon still stood on the table, which the two men had pushed well back so that they might rest their feet upon the fender. It was a hard March day; a day of penetrating wind. The draughts licked under the door and danced between the carpet and the shrunken boards. Outside in the square the only sound was the savage “boo” of the young spring gale. Harrowsmith’s fripperies--of photographs and gimcrack furniture in the lightest and latest style--appeared meager in the ancient room of his chambers--the little room with the heavily corniced ceiling and paneled walls. These fripperies, which he considered showed taste, were in the light of a personal affront to the solid oak cabinet against the wall immediately opposite the fireplace. Kinsman, of course, found this piece of furniture the only thing that he could look at with tolerance. He had been invited to meet it--to give his expert opinion on it. He kept turning his head and looking pityingly, covetously at it. He felt sorry for it, set as it was among modern cabinet-making and garish ornament. It was passing through a period of degradation, this stout cabinet of oak which had lived most likely for a couple of centuries in some manor house. He thought that it must surely feel its shame of contact. He couldn’t take his eyes off it. Once he found himself fancifully wishing that he wore blinkers like a horse so that he might shut out Harrowsmith’s other effects. “It’s beautiful, beautiful,” he sighed, shading his eyes with his hands and staring straight at the wall. “It’s original, every bit, even the cornice. I should like to know its history. If these old things could only talk!” “It’s all he left me. I expected a thousand at least,” grumbled Harrowsmith. Kinsman was still ardently drinking in the solid beauty of the cabinet--with its linen-patterned panels. One never saw carving of that pattern save on Tudor work. The thing was late Tudor. It was unique--and yet this materialistic doctor was not satisfied. He gazed at the glowing brown wood, at the slim posts supporting the upper cupboard, at the cunning hinges of iron. Never had he thrown at a woman so heart-whole a glance. “I wish a rich uncle would leave me such a thing,” he sighed. “Why, man, money won’t buy it. You may wait, you may search a lifetime, and not find such a well-preserved specimen of the period.”