To a man, lacking both reverence for family traditions and appreciation of the beautiful in art, who comes into possession of an ancient house and its contents, there must always be something painfully ironical about heirlooms. To such a man they are simply so much potential wealth which is being allowed to lie idle, doing no good to anybody. Mr. Carmody had always had that feeling very strongly. Unlike the majority of heirs, he had not been trained from boyhood to revere the home of his ancestors, and to look forward to its possession as a sacred trust. He had been the second son of a second son, and his chance of ever succeeding to the property was at the outset so remote that he had seldom given it a thought. He had gone into business at an early age, and when, in middle life, a series of accidents made him squire of Rudge Hall, he had brought with him to the place a practical eye and the commercial outlook. The result was that when he walked in the picture gallery and thought how much solid cash he could get for this Velasquez or that Gainsborough, if only he were given a free hand, the iron entered into Lester Carmody's soul. "They're heirlooms," he said. "I can't sell them." "How come? They're yours, aren't they?" "No," said Mr. Carmody, "they belong to the estate." On Mr. Molloy, as he listened to his host's lengthy exposition of the laws governing heirlooms, there descended a deepening cloud of gloom. You couldn't, it appeared, dispose of the darned things without the consent of trustees; while even if the trustees gave their consent they collared the money and invested it on behalf of the estate. And Mr. Molloy, though ordinarily a man of sanguine temperament, could not bring himself to believe that a hard-boiled bunch of trustees, most of them probably lawyers with tight lips and suspicious minds, would ever have the sporting spirit to take a flutter in Silver River Ordinaries. "Hell!" said Mr. Molloy with a good deal of feeling. Dolly linked her arm in his with a pretty gesture of affectionate solicitude. "Poor old Pop!" she said. "He's all broken up about this." Mr. Carmody regarded his guest sourly. "What's he got to worry about?" he asked with a certain resentment. "Why, Pop was sort of hoping he'd be able to buy all this stuff," said Dolly. "He was telling me only this morning that, if you felt like selling, he would write you out his cheque for whatever you wanted without thinking twice." V Moodily scanning his wife's face during Mr. Carmody's lecture on Heirloom Law, Mr. Molloy had observed it suddenly light up in a manner which suggested that some pleasing thought was passing through her always agile brain; but, presented now in words, this thought left him decidedly cold. He could not see any sense in it. "For the love of Pete...!" began Mr. Molloy.