r-ring, and so large that I saw it would entirely cover
our little room if I spread it out; a dingy red color, but splendid
in appearance from the little white hieroglyphic worked in one corner,
which is always worn outside, to show that it cost nobody knows how many
thousands of dollars.

"A Christmas trifle for Polly. I have come home--as I was saying when
that confounded twinge took me--to settle down; and I intend to make
Polly my heir, and live at my ease and enjoy life. Move that leg a
little, Jamsetzee."

I meekly replied that I had no doubt Polly would be delighted to see her
dear uncle, and as for inheriting, if it came to that, I did n't know
any one with a greater capacity for that than she.

"That depends," said the gruff old smoker, "how I like ye. A fortune,
scraped up in forty years in Ingy, ain't to be thrown away in a minute.
But what a house this is to live in!"; the uncomfortable old relative
went on, throwing a contemptuous glance round the humble cottage. "Is
this all of it?"

"In the winter it is all of it," I said, flushing up; "but in the
summer, when the doors and windows are open, it is as large as anybody's
house. And," I went on, with some warmth, "it was large enough just
before you came in, and pleasant enough. And besides," I said, rising
into indignation, "you can not get anything much better in this city
short of eight hundred dollars a year, payable first days of January,
April, July, and October, in advance, and my salary...."

"Hang your salary, and confound your impudence and your seven-by-nine
hovel! Do you think you have anything to say about the use of my money,
scraped up in forty years in Ingy? THINGS HAVE GOT TO BE CHANGED!" he
burst out, in a voice that rattled the glasses on the sideboard.

I should think they were. Even as I looked into the little fireplace it
enlarged, and there was an enormous grate, level with the floor, glowing
with seacoal; and a magnificent mantel carved in oak, old and brown; and
over it hung a landscape, wide, deep, summer in the foreground with all
the gorgeous coloring of the tropics, and beyond hills of blue and far
mountains lying in rosy light. I held my breath as I looked down the
marvelous perspective. Looking round for a second, I caught a glimpse of
a Hindoo at each window, who vanished as if they had been whisked off by
enchantment; and the close walls that shut us in fled away. Had cohesion
and gravitation given out? Was it the "Grea