“You must know,” he began, as we sat on deck watching the lofty outlines of St. David’s Head slowly fade in the distance, “you must know, O’Donnell, that after leaving Crawley’s I inherited a nice little sum of money from my aunt, Lady Maughan of Blackrock, who, dying quite unexpectedly, left the bulk of her property to my family. My brother Bob had her estate in Roscommon; Charley, the house near Dublin; whilst I--lucky beggar that I am--(for I was head over heels in debt at the time) suddenly found myself the happy possessor of £20,000 and--a bog-oak grandfather clock.” Here I thought fit to interrupt. “A bog-oak clock!” I exclaimed. “Good gracious me! what a funny legacy! Had you taken a fancy to it?” “I had never even seen it!” O’Moore laughed--then, looking suddenly serious: “My aunt, O’Donnell, as I daresay you recollect, was rather dry and satirical. The clock has not been exactly a pleasant acquisition to my establishment; so I fancy she may have bequeathed it to me as a sort of antidote to the exhilarating effect of £20,000. A sort of ‘bitter with the sweet,’ don’t you know! You appear astonished! You would like to hear more about the clock? And you are quite right, too; the history of a really antique piece of furniture is a million times more interesting a subject to discuss than a ton of gold. To begin with, it was almost as new to my aunt as to me; she had only had it a week before she died, and during that brief interval she had made up her mind to leave it to me. Odd, was it not? I thought so, too, at her funeral! Now it seems quite natural; I was her metaphysician, I knew her and understood her idiosyncrasies better than most people. She bought the clock for a mere song from a second-hand furniture dealer in Grafton Street. I was living at the time near Basingstoke in a small house--one of those horrible anachronisms, an up-to-date villa in an old-world village. “It’s a charming neighbourhood--suited me down to the ground: flat country (hills tire me to death), excellent roads (I am fond of riding), trout streams, pretty meadows, crowds of honeysuckle and that sort of thing, and, to crown all else, Pines!!! Now, if there is one scent for which I have a special weakness, it is that of the pine. I could sit out of doors _ad infinitum_ sniffing pines. It intoxicates me; hence I grew very fond of Hampshire. “Let me return to the clock. It came from Dublin to Bristol _viâ_ the good old Argo (what Bristolian is there, I should like to know, who doesn’t love the Argo!) and thence by rail to Basingstoke, arriving at my house after dusk. You see, I am talking of it almost as if it were some live person! But then, you see, it was a bog-oak grandfather’s clock--no common grinder I can assure you; and I was prepared to pay it every homage the moment it was landed in the hall.