After our uncle’s death, Ronald, it was well known, was to reign in his stead—supplanting myself, albeit the son of an elder brother and the natural heir. But my father had been unlucky enough to marry the woman of old Heyward’s choice, and the sin of the father was to be visited upon the son. Our uncle (to do him justice) never made a pretence of equity in the matter. “I should turn in my grave,” he said, “if I thought that son of his was to follow in my room.” And there the matter ended. Short of this, he was fond of me in his own undemonstrative way. Only lately he had settled me at Bayview with a handsome allowance, where I was to make acquaintance with the rudiments of the law till it was time for me to enter at Cambridge. Honestly I can say that I never grudged Ronald his inheritance. He and I were brothers rather than cousins, and I cannot remember the time when the sturdy little Viking was not dear to my heart. Perhaps it was I who gave the most, and he who took it. But that is only as it should be, provided he who gives and he who takes are equally nothing loth. The house was an ideal home for us, so long as we shared it in common. When we were separated, it became unutterably dull for the one who was left companionless. Ghosts it must have had in plenty. There certainly was an “impluvium,” which in these days is rarer than a ghost. I mean that the whole centre of the house was open to the winds of heaven, for the purpose of collecting the rain water which fell into a huge reservoir at the basement. The ghosts, if any, never showed themselves—frightened in all probability by the antagonism of Ronald’s temperament. But we discovered what was next best to the real article—the equipments and paraphernalia of one. In a disused coach-house we came one day on an old travelling carriage of the fashion in use sixty years ago, when paterfamilias took himself and his family for a progress round the country. Rumble it had, and imperial, and a chest of most unearthly pattern, accommodated to the space under the back seat. But the glass was broken in the frames, and the hangings were mouldy. The very woodwork was so worm-eaten that at a touch you would expect it to crumble into dust, like one of the Pharaohs when he is disencumbered of his trappings. It was painted—or rather had been painted—a sable black, but the colour had deteriorated with time to the hue of rusty crêpe.