The floor was scrubbed white, the centre was covered by a bright, clean patch of carpet, and a small gate-legged table exposed a polished surface. There were two or three pictures on the walls, ancient and unfashionable prints, representing mythological happenings. Ulysses Returned was one, Perseus and the Gorgon was another. Prometheus Bound was an inevitable third. The song of a dozen birds came to Amber as he closed the door softly behind him. Their cages ran up the wall on either side of the opened window, the sill of which was a smother of scarlet geranium. Sitting in a windsor chair by the table was a man of middle age. He was bald-headed, his moustache and side whiskers were fiery red, and, though his eyebrows were shaggy and his eyes stern, his general appearance was one of extreme benevolence. His occupation was a remarkable one, for he was sewing, with small stitches, a pillow-case. He dropped his work on to his knees as Amber entered. “Hullo!” he said, and shook his head reprovingly. “Bad penny, bad penny--eh! Come in; I’ll make you a cup of tea.” He folded his work with a care that was almost feminine, placed it in a little work-basket, and went bustling about the room. He wore carpet slippers that were a little too large for him, and he talked all the time. “How long have you been out?--More trouble ahead? Keep thy hands from picking and stealing, and thy mouth free from evil speaking--tut, tut!” “My Socrates,” said Amber reproachfully. “No, no, no!” the little man was lighting a fire of sticks, “nobody ever accused you of bad talk, as Wild Cloud says--never read that yarn, have you? You’ve missed a treat. _Denver Dad’s Bid for Fortune, or, The King of the Sioux_--pronounced Soo. It’s worth reading. The twenty-fourth part of it is out to-day.” He chattered on, and his talk was about the desperate and decorative heroism of the Wild West. Peter Musk, such was his name, was a hero-worshipper, a lover of the adventurous, and an assiduous reader of that type of romance which too hasty critics dismiss contemptuously as “dreadfuls.” Packed away behind the bright cretonne curtains that hid his book-shelves were many hundreds of these stories, each of which had gone to the creation of the atmosphere in which Peter lived. “And what has my Peter been doing all this long time?” asked Amber. Peter set the cups and smiled, a little mysteriously. “The old life,” he said, “my studies, my birds, a little needlework--life runs very smoothly to a broken man an’ a humble student of life.” He smiled again, as at a secret thought. Amber was neither piqued nor amused by the little man’s mystery, but regarded him with affectionate interest.