Clement Yule gazed awhile at one of the pompous quarterings in the faded old glass that, in tones as of late autumn, crowned with armorial figures the top of the great hall-window; then with abruptness he turned away. “Perhaps I _don’t_ take it all in; but what I do feel is--since you mention it--a sort of stiffening of the spine! The whole thing is too queer--too cold--too cruel.” “Cruel?”--Mr. Prodmore’s demur was virtuous. “Like the face of some stuck-up distant relation who won’t speak first. I see in the stare of the old dragon, I taste in his very breath, all the helpless mortality he has tucked away!” “Lord, sir--you _have_ fancies!” Mr. Prodmore was almost scandalised. But the young man’s fancies only multiplied as he moved, not at all critical, but altogether nervous, from object to object. “I don’t know what’s the matter--but there _is_ more here than meets the eye.” He tried as for his amusement or his relief to figure it out. “I miss the old presences. I feel the old absences. I hear the old voices. I see the old ghosts.” This last was a profession that offered some common ground. “The old ghosts, Captain Yule,” his companion promptly replied, “are worth so much a dozen, and with no reduction, I must remind you--with the price indeed rather raised--for the quantity taken!” Feeling then apparently that he had cleared the air a little by this sally, Mr. Prodmore proceeded to pat his interlocutor on a back that he by no means wished to cause to be put to the wall. “Look about you, at any rate, a little more.” He crossed with his toes well out the line that divides encouragement from patronage. “Do make yourself at home.” “Thank you very much, Mr. Prodmore. May I light a cigarette?” his visitor asked. “In your own house, Captain?” “That’s just the question: it seems so much less my own house than before I had come into it!” The Captain offered Mr. Prodmore a cigarette which that gentleman, also taking a light from him, accepted; then he lit his own and began to smoke. “As I understand you,” he went on, “you _lump_ your two conditions? I mean I must accept both or neither?” Mr. Prodmore threw back his shoulders with a high recognition of the long stride represented by this question. “You _will_ accept both, for, by doing so, you’ll clear the property at a stroke. The way I put it is--see?--that if you’ll stand for Gossage, you’ll get returned for Gossage.” “And if I get returned for Gossage, I shall marry your daughter. Accordingly,” the young man pursued, “if I marry your daughter----” “I’ll burn up, before your eyes,” said this young lady’s proprietor, “every scratch of your pen. It will be a bonfire of signatures. There won’t be a penny to pay--there’ll only be a position to take. You’ll take it with peculiar grace.” “Peculiar, Mr. Prodmore--very!” The young man had assented more than he desired, but he was not deterred by it from completing the picture. “You’ll settle down here in comfort and honour.”