logy by looking ten years younger
than he was known to be. For at least a decade he had been invaluable to
Lichfield matrons alike against the entertainment of an "out-of-town
girl," the management of a cotillion and the prevention of unpleasant
pauses among incongruous dinner companies.

In short, he was by all accounts the social triumph of his generation;
and his military title, won by four years of arduous service at
receptions and parades while on the staff of a former Governor of the
State, this seasoned bachelor carried off with plausibility and
distinction.

The story finds him "Librarian and Corresponding Secretary" of the
Lichfield Historical Association, which office he had held for some six
years. The salary was small, and the colonel had inherited little; but
his sister, Miss Agatha Musgrave, who lived with him, was a notable
housekeeper. He increased his resources in a gentlemanly fashion by
genealogical research, directed mostly toward the rehabilitation of
ambiguous pedigrees; and for the rest, no other man could have fulfilled
more gracefully the main duty of the Librarian, which was to exhibit the
Association's collection of relics to hurried tourists "doing"
Lichfield.

His "Library manner" was modeled upon that which an eighteenth century
portrait would conceivably possess, should witchcraft set the canvas
breathing.

III

Also the story finds Colonel Musgrave in the company of his sister on a
warm April day, whilst these two sat upon the porch of the Musgrave home
in Lichfield, and Colonel Musgrave waited until it should be time to
open the Library for the afternoon. And about them birds twittered
cheerily, and the formal garden flourished as gardens thrive nowhere
except in Lichfield, and overhead the sky was a turkis-blue, save for a
few irrelevant clouds which dappled it here and there like splashes of
whipped cream.

Yet, for all this, the colonel was ill-at-ease; and care was on his
brow, and venom in his speech.

"And one thing," Colonel Musgrave concluded, with decision, "I wish
distinctly understood, and that is, if she insists on having young men
loafing about her--as, of course, she will--she will have to entertain
them in the garden. I won't have them in the house, Agatha. You remember
that Langham girl you had here last Easter?" he added, disconsolately
--"the one who positively littered up the house with young men,
and sang idiotic jingles to them at all hours of the n