oger Stapylton was president.

But upon this point Rudolph Musgrave was obdurate.

He had voiced, and with sincerity, as you may remember, his desire to be
proven upon a larger stage than Lichfield afforded. Yet the sincerity
was bred of an emotion it did not survive. To-day, unconsciously,
Rudolph Musgrave was reflecting that he was used to living in Lichfield,
and would appear to disadvantage in a new surrounding, and very probably
would not be half so comfortable.

Aloud he said, in firm belief that he spoke truthfully: "I cannot
conscientiously give up the Library, sir. I realize the work may not
seem important in your eyes. Indeed, in anybody's eyes it must seem an
inadequate outcome of a man's whole life. But it unfortunately happens
to be the only kind of work I am capable of doing. And--if you will
pardon me, sir,--I do not think it would be honest for me to accept this
generous salary and give nothing in return."

But here Patricia broke in.

Patricia agreed with Colonel Musgrave in every particular. Indeed, had
Colonel Musgrave proclaimed his intention of setting up in life as an
assassin, Patricia would readily have asserted homicide to be the most
praiseworthy of vocations. As it was, she devoted no little volubility
and emphasis and eulogy to the importance of a genealogist in the
eternal scheme of things; and gave her father candidly to understand
that an inability to appreciate this fact was necessarily indicative of
a deplorably low order of intelligence.

Musgrave was to remember--long afterward--how glorious and dear this
brightly-colored, mettlesome and tiny woman had seemed to him in the
second display of temper he witnessed in Patricia. It was a revelation
of an additional and as yet unsuspected adorability.

Her father, though, said: "Pat, I've suspected for a long time it was
foolish of me to have a red-haired daughter." Thus he capitulated,--and
with an ineffable air of routine.

Colonel Musgrave was, in a decorous fashion, the happiest of living
persons.

II

Colonel Musgrave was, in a decorous fashion, the happiest of living
persons....

As a token of this he devoted what little ready money he possessed to
renovating Matocton, where he had not lived for twenty years. He rarely
thought of money, not esteeming it an altogether suitable subject for a
gentleman's meditations. And to do him justice, the reflection that old
Stapylton's wealth would some day be at Rudolph Musgrav