it never had been
opened. A square of sunlight lit the upper part of the cheap lace
curtain on the right of the window, and repeated its pattern vaguely on
the lower part of the wall opposite. Then a bluebottle fly awoke
suddenly into life and began to buzz and drum against the window pane,
and Lestrange wished that they would come.

A man of his temperament must necessarily, even under the happiest
circumstances, suffer in going through the world; the fine fibre always
suffers when brought into contact with the coarse. These people were as
kindly disposed as anyone else. The advertisement and the face and
manners of the visitor might have told them that it was not the time
for delay, yet they kept him waiting whilst they arranged bed-quilts
and put medicine bottles straight as if he could see!

At last the door opened, and the woman said:

"Will you step this way, sir?"

She showed him into a bedroom opening off the passage. The room was
neat and clean, and had that indescribable appearance which marks the
bedroom of the invalid.

In the bed, making a mountain under the counterpane with an enormously
distended stomach, lay a man, black-bearded, and with his large,
capable, useless hands spread out on the coverlet--hands ready and
willing, but debarred from work. Without moving his body, he turned his
head slowly and looked at the newcomer. This slow movement was not
from weakness or disease, it was the slow, emotionless nature of the
man speaking.

"This is the gentleman, Silas," said the woman, speaking over
Lestrange's shoulder. Then she withdrew and closed the door.

"Take a chair, sir," said the sea captain, flapping one of his hands on
the counterpane as if in wearied protest against his own helplessness.
"I haven't the pleasure of your name, but the missus tells me you're
come about the advertisement I lit on yester-even."

He took a paper, folded small, that lay beside him, and held it out to
his visitor. It was a Sidney Bulletin three years old.

"Yes," said Lestrange, looking at the paper; "that is my advertisement."

"Well, it's strange--very strange," said Captain Fountain, "that I
should have lit on it only yesterday. I've had it all three years in my
chest, the way old papers get lying at the bottom with odds and ends.
Mightn't a' seen it now, only the missus cleared the raffle out of the
chest, and, `Give me that paper,' I says, seeing it in her hand; and I
fell to reading it, for a man'll re