and neglected; but one or two rooms had plainly been inhabited in a
simple but not squalid style by somebody; somebody who was not the
servant Gow. The list is as follows:

"First item. A very considerable hoard of precious stones, nearly
all diamonds, and all of them loose, without any setting whatever. Of
course, it is natural that the Ogilvies should have family jewels; but
those are exactly the jewels that are almost always set in particular
articles of ornament. The Ogilvies would seem to have kept theirs loose
in their pockets, like coppers.

"Second item. Heaps and heaps of loose snuff, not kept in a horn, or
even a pouch, but lying in heaps on the mantelpieces, on the sideboard,
on the piano, anywhere. It looks as if the old gentleman would not take
the trouble to look in a pocket or lift a lid.

"Third item. Here and there about the house curious little heaps of
minute pieces of metal, some like steel springs and some in the form of
microscopic wheels. As if they had gutted some mechanical toy.

"Fourth item. The wax candles, which have to be stuck in bottle necks
because there is nothing else to stick them in. Now I wish you to note
how very much queerer all this is than anything we anticipated. For the
central riddle we are prepared; we have all seen at a glance that there
was something wrong about the last earl. We have come here to find out
whether he really lived here, whether he really died here, whether that
red-haired scarecrow who did his burying had anything to do with his
dying. But suppose the worst in all this, the most lurid or melodramatic
solution you like. Suppose the servant really killed the master, or
suppose the master isn't really dead, or suppose the master is dressed
up as the servant, or suppose the servant is buried for the master;
invent what Wilkie Collins' tragedy you like, and you still have not
explained a candle without a candlestick, or why an elderly gentleman of
good family should habitually spill snuff on the piano. The core of
the tale we could imagine; it is the fringes that are mysterious. By no
stretch of fancy can the human mind connect together snuff and diamonds
and wax and loose clockwork."

"I think I see the connection," said the priest. "This Glengyle was
mad against the French Revolution. He was an enthusiast for the ancien
regime, and was trying to re-enact literally the family life of the last
Bourbons. He had snuff because it was the eighteenth century lux