a
stage, be lifted to reveal more wonderful things.

Shortly after my father's death, I was seated one morning in the
library. I had been, somewhat listlessly, regarding the portrait that
hangs among the books, which I knew only as that of a distant ancestor,
and wishing I could learn something of its original. Then I had taken a
book from the shelves and begun to read.

Glancing up from it, I saw coming toward me--not between me and the
door, but between me and the portrait--a thin pale man in rusty black.
He looked sharp and eager, and had a notable nose, at once reminding me
of a certain jug my sisters used to call Mr. Crow.

"Finding myself in your vicinity, Mr. Vane, I have given myself the
pleasure of calling," he said, in a peculiar but not disagreeable
voice. "Your honoured grandfather treated me--I may say it without
presumption--as a friend, having known me from childhood as his father's
librarian."

It did not strike me at the time how old the man must be.

"May I ask where you live now, Mr. Crow?" I said.

He smiled an amused smile.

"You nearly hit my name," he rejoined, "which shows the family insight.
You have seen me before, but only once, and could not then have heard
it!"

"Where was that?"

"In this very room. You were quite a child, however!"

I could not be sure that I remembered him, but for a moment I fancied I
did, and I begged him to set me right as to his name.

"There is such a thing as remembering without recognising the memory in
it," he remarked. "For my name--which you have near enough--it used to
be Raven."

I had heard the name, for marvellous tales had brought it me.

"It is very kind of you to come and see me," I said. "Will you not sit
down?"

He seated himself at once.

"You knew my father, then, I presume?"

"I knew him," he answered with a curious smile, "but he did not care
about my acquaintance, and we never met.--That gentleman, however," he
added, pointing to the portrait,--"old Sir Up'ard, his people called
him,--was in his day a friend of mine yet more intimate than ever your
grandfather became."

Then at length I began to think the interview a strange one. But in
truth it was hardly stranger that my visitor should remember Sir Upward,
than that he should have been my great-grandfather's librarian!

"I owe him much," he continued; "for, although I had read many more
books than he, yet, through the special direction of his studies, he was
able to infor