The forecourt and its immediate background bore a very different appearance, for the garden, encompassed by moss-grown walls, was ablaze with flowers, while one huge mulberry tree reared its foliage before the main entrance of the building, its leaves rustling against the curious old dormer windows and strangely shaped balconies which adorned the front. Beneath the grateful shade cast by that mulberry tree lay Septimus John Clifford himself, at full length in a capacious basketwork chair, oblivious of his surroundings, careless even of the persistent flies that hovered about the gaudy silk handkerchief with which he had covered his head. Mr. Septimus was asleep. Clerks in the busy office within the huge bay window, not five yards from him, turned the leaves of musty ledgers with pathetic care lest they should awake the ruler of this establishment. The office boy, an urchin with round, rosy cheeks, swelled to the point of bursting, gathered up his feet upon the staves of his chair when the head clerk admonished him for shuffling them, and cast an anxious eye out through the wide-open window. Marlow, the clerk nearest to that sleeping form, almost held his breath; for he was apt to grunt and expand his lungs with a hiss that was exasperating. "One hour, I think," observed Huggins, a white-haired clerk, who seemed to be the head of the office, consulting a silver watch which was as large as a good-sized turnip. "One hour precisely, I make it." "And four minutes," ventured his assistant, a thin, lanky man, white-haired like his comrade. "It is time to wake him." "Yes, now; he would not forgive delay." Huggins rose silently from the high stool on which he was seated and crossed to the door on tiptoe. He descended the picturesque steps leading from the main entrance to the place with as much care as he would have employed had he been stepping over hot bricks, and advanced to the side of his master, as if determined to leave him asleep till the very last possible moment. For that was the spirit which pervaded the establishment of Septimus John Clifford & Son. A good master was served by loyal and grateful clerks, of whom none were more loyal and thoughtful than Huggins, the stout, clean-shaven, white-haired man who had spent thirty years of his peaceful life in the office.