o a
sideboard, and produced a plate of biscuits, another of dried figs, a
glass, and two decanters.

"Sherry and Madeira," he said. "There is also a cold pie in the larder,
if you care for it."

"A biscuit will serve," I replied. "To tell the truth, I'm more for the
bucket than the manger, as the grooms say: and the brandy you were
tasting just now is more to my mind than wine."

"There is no water handy."

"I have soaked in enough to-night to last me with this bottle."

I pulled over a chair, laid my pistol on the table, and held out the
glass for him to fill. Having done so, he helped himself to a glass and
a chair, and sat down facing me.

"I was speaking, just now, of my late butler," he began, with a sip at
his brandy. "Does it strike you that, when confronted with moral
delinquency, I am apt to let my indignation get the better of me?"

"Not at all," I answered heartily, refilling my glass.

It appeared that another reply would have pleased him better.

"H'm. I was hoping that, perhaps, I had visited his offence too
strongly. As a clergyman, you see, I was bound to be severe; but upon
my word, sir, since Parkinson left I have felt like a man who has lost a
limb."

He drummed with his fingers on the cloth for a few moments, and went
on--

"One has a natural disposition to forgive butlers--Pharaoh, for
instance, felt it. There hovers around butlers an atmosphere in which
common ethics lose their pertinence. But mine was a rare bird--a black
swan among butlers! He was more than a butler: he was a quick and
brightly gifted man. Of the accuracy of his taste, and the unusual
scope of his endeavour, you will be able to form some opinion when I
assure you he modelled himself upon _me_."

I bowed, over my brandy.

"I am a scholar: yet I employed him to read aloud to me, and derived
pleasure from his intonation. I talk with refinement: yet he learned to
answer me in language as precise as my own. My cast-off garments fitted
him not more irreproachably than did my amenities of manner. Divest him
of his tray, and you would find his mode of entering a room hardly
distinguishable from my own--the same urbanity, the same alertness of
carriage, the same superfine deference towards the weaker sex. All--all
my idiosyncrasies I saw reflected in him; and can you doubt that I was
gratified? He was my _alter ego_--which, by the way, makes it harder
for me to pardon his behaviour with the cook."

"Look