in his immediate financial circumstances, economy, he said, was desirable. He also shut up the greater part of the big house, finding a dim sort of pleasure in such retrenchment. He lived in his museum at the back, ate his meals in the little dark room at the head of the kitchen stairs, and changed his luxurious bedroom for a murky, cheerless little chamber adjoining the museum. When a man takes misery for a bride he may be forgiven for exaggeration in his early transports. Only on Tuesday nights did he throw open dining-room and drawing-room, where he received Huckaby, Vandermeer, and Billiter as in the past. To them his smile and his old self were given. Indeed he found a newer sympathy with them. He, even as they, had been the victim of outrageous fortune. He, too, had suffered from the treachery of man and the insolence of office. The three found an extra guerdon in their great-coat pockets. There were times, however, when the museum grew wearisome through familiarity, when he found no novelty in the Quaternary skull from Silesia, or the engraved reindeers on the neolithic axe-heads, or the necklet of the lady of the bronze age; when he craved things nearer to his own time which could give him some message of modernity. On such occasions he would either walk abroad, or if the weather were foul, take a childish pleasure in exploring the sealed chambers of the house. For, shut up a room, exclude from it the light of day, cover the furniture with dust-sheets till you get the semblance of a morgue of strange beasts, forget it for a while, and, on re-entering it, you will have all the elements of mystery which gradually and agreeably give place to little pleasant shocks of discovery of the familiar. The neglected pictures that have hung on the walls, the huddled knick-knacks on a table, the heap of books on the floor, all have messages of gentle reproach. A newspaper of years ago, wrapped round a cushion, once opened by eager hands and containing in its headlines world-shaking news (now so stale and forgotten) is a pathetic object. In drawers are garments out of date, preserved heaven knows why, keepsakes worked by fair hands, unused but negligently treasured, faded curtains which will never be rehung—a thousand old stimulating things, down to ends of sealing-wax and carefully rolled bits of twine. And some drawers are empty, and from them rises the odour of lavender poignant with memories of the things that are no more. It was a large, old-fashioned house which had been his father’s before him, in which he had been born; and it was full of memories. In the recess of a dark cupboard in one of the attics he found a glass jar, which had escaped the vigilance or commanded the respect of generations of housemaids, covered with a parchment on which was written in his mother’s hand, “Damson Jam.” His mother had died a quarter of a century ago.