it hadn't been for a fool of an
agent of mine, your uncle would never have had the Arconati Bacchus."

Faversham was silent--evidently trying to feel his way through some
induction of thought. But he gave it up as too much for him, and merely
said--nervously--with the sudden flush of weakness:

"I'm afraid you've been put to great expense, sir. But it's all right. As
soon as they'll let me sign a check, I'll pay my debts."

"Good gracious, don't trouble your head about that!" said Melrose rising.
"This house is at your disposal. Undershaw I daresay will tell you tales
of me. Take 'em with a grain of salt. He'll tell you I'm mad, and I
daresay I am. I'm a hermit anyway, and I like my own society. But you're
welcome here, as long as you've any reason to stay. I should like you to
know that I do not regard Mackworth's nephew as a stranger."

The studied amiability of these remarks struck Faversham as surprising,
he hardly knew why. Suddenly, a phrase emerged in memory.

"Every one about here calls him the Ogre."

The girl by the river--was it? He could not remember. Why!--the Ogre was
tame enough. But the conversation--the longest he had yet held--had
exhausted him. He turned on his side, and shut his eyes.

* * * * *

Then gradually, day by day, he came to understand the externals, at any
rate, of the situation. Undershaw gave him a guarded, though still
graphic, account of how, as unconscious as the dead Cid strapped on his
warhorse, he and his bodyguard had stormed the Tower. The jests of the
nurse, as to the practical difficulties of living in such a house,
enlightened him further. Melrose, it appeared, lived like a peasant, and
spent like a peasant. They brought him tales of the locked rooms, of the
passages huddled and obstructed with bric-a-brac, of the standing feuds
between Melrose and his tenants. None of the ordinary comforts of life
existed in the Tower, except indeed a vast warming apparatus which kept
it like an oven in winter; the only personal expenditure, beyond bare
necessaries, that Melrose allowed himself. Yet it was commonly believed
that he was enormously rich, and that he still spent enormously on his
collections. Undershaw had attended a London stockbroker staying in one
of the Keswick hotels, who had told him, for instance, that Melrose was
well known to the "House" as one of the largest holders of Argentine
stock in the world, and as having made also immense