“Then my old days with McTaggert and my work of trap-setting came to me, and getting leave to go below stairs, I chanced to fall in with Leverings himself, who proved to be a fellow-countryman. One thing led to another; I told him of a kind of trap McTaggert made, and sent for one; soon I was working for him, improved the trap, took out a patent on it, and five years later, when he was ready to drop out and go home, I succeeded to his business, as the card says, and sometimes employed upwards of twenty men who travelled all about the country, though for some reason I can’t explain, my own name never appeared as head of the business. “Meanwhile, things had gone badly at home; soon after I left, Annie Fenton’s father, thinking a bird in the hand the best bargain, tried to force her to marry my brother, but she slipped away to an aunt somewhere in America, leaving no trace of herself. “John mismanaged the land, and, being caught in sharp practice, fell into debt, leased out what he could of the place without thought of mother, and went, some said, to Australia, though others said he had followed Annie. Next, my mother fell into straits, and as I knew she couldn’t be happy here, at least until I had a settled home, I sent her money every month, through old McTaggert, lest it should be caught in any way to pay my brother’s debts. “It was close upon Christmas of the sixth year after I left home when I had about made up my mind to go back for the holidays, that one of my best customers, the owner of several large buildings for which I cared, asked me if I would go out to his country house for a week or so and see if I could do something about the rats, that, since cold weather, had come into the cellar in a drove and were working up through the house, destroying the woodwork and furnishings. He was to have house parties there all through the holidays, and he wished, if possible, to have the rats kept down, if nothing more, lest they annoy his guests. “By this time I had given up personal jobs, preferring to look over the ground and arrange the plans for my men, but Mr. —— rather insisted that I should go to his place alone, promising to put me up at the lodge, and so I went. Talk about seeing life, Dr. Russell, no one sees more of it behind the scenes, as it were, than a rat-catcher. To do his work properly on a large scale, he must be trusted to go everywhere, at all hours. Those years had educated me, and at the same time made me old at thirty. I saw into all their ways, how houses were furnished, the pictures and books people bought, what food they ate, and what wine they drank, and—beg pardon, sir, I’m getting off my story.