He had scarcely glanced at it when a strange look passed over his countenance. He tried to draw it, failed, and looking all along the sheath, saw its condition. Then his eyes flashed. He turned from me abruptly, and went up the stair he had descended. I waited anxiously for what seemed to me half an hour: I dare say it was not more than ten minutes. At last I heard him revolving on his axis down the corkscrew staircase. He entered and handed me my sword, saying-- ‘There! I can’t get it out of the sheath. It’s in a horrid state of rust. Where did you fall in with it?’ I told him all I knew about it. If he did not seem exactly interested, he certainly behaved with some oddity. When I told him what my grandmother had said about some battle in which an ancestor had worn it, his arm rose with a jerk, and the motions of his face, especially of his mouth, which appeared to be eating its own teeth, were for a moment grotesque. When I had finished, he said, with indifferent tone, but eager face-- ‘Well, it’s a rusty old thing, but I like old weapons. I’ll give you a bran new officer’s sword, as bright as a mirror, for it--I will. There now! Is it a bargain?’ ‘I could not part with it, sir--not for the best sword in the country,’ I answered. ‘You see it has been so long in our family.’ ‘Hm! hm! you’re quite right, my boy. I wouldn’t if I were you. But as I see you know how to set a right value on such a weapon, you may stay and look at mine as long as you like. Only if you take any of them from their sheaths, you must be very careful how you put them in again. Don’t use any force. If there is any one you can’t manage easily, just lay it on the window-sill, and I will attend to it. Mind you don’t handle--I mean touch--the blades at all. There would be no end of rust-spots before morning.’ I was full of gratitude for the confidence he placed in me. ‘I can’t stop now to tell you about them all, but I will--some day.’ So saying he disappeared once more up the little staircase, leaving me like Aladdin in the jewel-forest. I had not been alone more than half an hour or so, however, when he returned, and taking down a dagger, said abruptly, ‘There, that is the dagger with which Lord Harry Rolleston’--I think that was the name, but knowing nothing of the family or its history, I could not keep the names separate--‘stabbed his brother Gilbert. And there is--’ He took down one after another, and with every one he associated some fact--or fancy perhaps, for I suspect now that he invented not a few of his incidents. ‘They have always been fond of weapons in this house,’ he said. ‘There now is one with the strangest story! It’s in print--I can show it you in print in the library there. It had the reputation of being a magic sword--’ ‘Like King Arthur’s Excalibur?’ I asked, for I had read a good deal of the history of Prince Arthur.