It was long past Peter's usual bedtime; but he was trimming his oil lamp, just now, in his tiny octagonal sitting-room, half-way up the tower. He had been busy all the evening, with the secret of his happiness, which was a very queer one indeed. He was trying to write a book, trying and failing. His papers were scattered all over the worn red cloth that tried--and failed--to cover his oak table, exactly as poor Peter's language was trying to clothe his thought. Indeed, there were many clues to his life and character in that room, which served many purposes. It had only one window, hardly larger than the arrow-defying slits of a Norman castle. It was his kitchen, and a cooking-stove was fitted compactly into a corner. It was his library; and, facing the window, there was a book-shelf, containing several tattered volumes by Mark Rutherford; a Bible; the "Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture," by Gladstone; the "First Principles" of Herbert Spencer; and the Essays of Emerson. There was also a small volume, bound in blue leather, called "The Wonders of the Deep." The leather binding was protected by a brown paper jacket, for it was a prize, awarded by the Westport Grammar School, in 1864, to Peter Ramsay, aged fourteen, for his excellence in orthography. This, of course, was the beginning of all his dreams; and it was still their sustainment, though the death of his father, who had been the captain of a small coasting steamer, had thrown Peter on the world before he was fifteen, and ended his hopes of the scholarship, which was to have carried him eventually to the heights. The bound volumes were buttressed between piles of the _British Weekly_. The only picture on the wall was a framed oleograph of Gladstone, his chief hero, though Peter had long ago renounced the theology of the Impregnable Rock. Whether the great statesman deserved this worship or not is a matter for historians. The business of this chronicle is to record the views of Peter, and these were quite clear.