ber to show anything but courteous and fair dealing.

He expressed no surprise when he heard what we wanted to see, but smiled
tolerantly and led the way, not into the well-defined realm of the past,
the present, or the future, but into a region of uncertain fortunes, a
limbo of acknowledged but unrewarded merits, a large back room devoted
to the works of American painters. Here we found Falconer's picture;
and the dealer, with that instinctive tact which is the best part of his
business capital, left us alone to look at it.

It showed the mouth of a little river: a secluded lagoon, where the
shallow tides rose and fell with vague lassitude, following the impulse
of prevailing winds more than the strong attraction of the moon. But now
the unsailed harbour was quite still, in the pause of the evening;
and the smooth undulations were caressed by a hundred opalescent hues,
growing deeper toward the west, where the river came in. Converging
lines of trees stood dark against the sky; a cleft in the woods marked
the course of the stream, above which the reluctant splendours of an
autumnal day were dying in ashes of roses, while three tiny clouds,
poised high in air, burned red with the last glimpse of the departed
sun.

On the right was a reedy point running out into the bay, and behind it,
on a slight rise of ground, an antique house with tall white pillars. It
was but dimly outlined in the gathering shadows; yet one could
imagine its stately, formal aspect, its precise garden with beds of
old-fashioned flowers and straight paths bordered with box, and a
little arbour overgrown with honeysuckle. I know not by what subtlety of
delicate and indescribable touches--a slight inclination in one of the
pillars, a broken line which might indicate an unhinged gate, a drooping
resignation in the foliage of the yellowing trees, a tone of sadness
in the blending of subdued colours--the painter had suggested that the
place was deserted. But the truth was unmistakable. An air of loneliness
and pensive sorrow breathed from the picture; a sigh of longing and
regret. It was haunted by sad, sweet memories of some untold story of
human life.

In the corner Falconer had put his signature, T. F., "LARMONE," 189-,
and on the border of the picture he had faintly traced some words, which
we made out at last--

"A spirit haunts the year's last hours."

Pierrepont took up the quotation and completed it--

"A spirit haunts the year's