"You might call him that," I assented. "Yes--I think uncanny would fit him. A very marvellous man, though, at his age." "Aye!" she exclaimed, under her breath. "If I could live to see it, it wouldn't surprise me if he lived to be four hundred. He's so queer. Do you know that he actually goes out early--very early--in the morning and swims in the open sea?" "Any weather?" I suggested. "No matter what the weather is," she replied. "He's been here three weeks now, and he has never missed that morning swim. And sometimes the mornings have been Arctic--more than I could stand, anyway, and I'm pretty well hardened." "A decided character!" I said musingly. "And somehow, he seems to fit in with his present surroundings. From what I have seen of it, Mr. Raven was quite right in telling me that this house was a museum." I was looking about me as I spoke. The big, high-roofed hall, like every room I had so far seen, was filled from floor to ceiling with books, pictures, statuary, armour, curiosities of every sort and of many ages. The prodigious numbers of the books alone showed me that I had no light task in prospect. But Miss Raven shook her head. "Museum!" she exclaimed. "I should think so! But you've seen nothing--wait till you see the north wing. Every room in that is crammed with things--I think my great-uncle, who left all this to Uncle Francis recently, must have done nothing whatever but buy, and buy, and buy things, and then, when he got them home, have just dumped them down anywhere! There's some order here," she added, looking round, "but across there, in the north wing, it's confusion." "Did you know your great-uncle?" I asked. "I? No!" she replied. "Oh, dear me, no! I'd never been in the north until Uncle Francis came home from India some months ago and fetched me from the school where I'd been ever since my father and mother died--that was when I was twelve. No, except my father, I never knew any of the Raven family. I believe Uncle Francis and myself are the very last." "You must like living under the old family roof?" I suggested. She gave me a somewhat undecided look. "I'm not quite sure," she answered. "Uncle Francis is the very soul of kindness--I think he's the very kindest person, man or woman, I ever came across, but--I don't know." "Don't know--what?" I asked. "Don't know if I really like this place," she said. "As I said to you this afternoon, this is a very odd house altogether, and there's a strange atmosphere about it, and I think something must have happened here. I--well, personally, I feel as if I were something so very small and insignificant, shut up in immensity." "That's because it's a little strange, even now," I suggested. "You'll get used to it. And I suppose there's society."