rt, for the
faces and friends that are no more. Elsewhere he is delighted with the
presence of what is new, there tormented by the absence of what is old.
Elsewhere he is content to be his present self; there he is smitten with
an equal regret for what he once was and for what he once hoped to be.

He was feeling all this dimly, as he drove from the station, on his last
visit; he was feeling it still as he alighted at the door of his friend
Mr. Johnstone Thomson, W.S., with whom he was to stay. A hearty welcome,
a face not altogether changed, a few words that sounded of old days, a
laugh provoked and shared, a glimpse in passing of the snowy cloth and
bright decanters and the Piranesis on the dining-room wall, brought him
to his bed-room with a somewhat lightened cheer, and when he and Mr.
Thomson sat down a few minutes later, cheek by jowl, and pledged the
past in a preliminary bumper, he was already almost consoled, he had
already almost forgiven himself his two unpardonable errors, that he
should ever have left his native city, or ever returned to it.

"I have something quite in your way," said Mr. Thomson. "I wished to do
honour to your arrival; because, my dear fellow, it is my own youth that
comes back along with you; in a very tattered and withered state, to be
sure, but--well!--all that's left of it."

"A great deal better than nothing," said the editor. "But what is this
which is quite in my way?"

"I was coming to that," said Mr. Thomson: "Fate has put it in my power
to honour your arrival with something really original by way of dessert.
A mystery."

"A mystery?" I repeated.

"Yes," said his friend, "a mystery. It may prove to be nothing, and it
may prove to be a great deal. But in the meanwhile it is truly
mysterious, no eye having looked on it for near a hundred years; it is
highly genteel, for it treats of a titled family; and it ought to be
melodramatic, for (according to the superscription) it is concerned with
death."

"I think I rarely heard a more obscure or a more promising
annunciation," the other remarked. "But what is It?"

"You remember my predecessor's, old Peter M'Brair's business?"

"I remember him acutely; he could not look at me without a pang of
reprobation, and he could not feel the pang without betraying it. He was
to me a man of a great historical interest, but the interest was not
returned."

"Ah well, we go beyond him," said Mr. Thomson. "I daresay old Peter knew
as little