e
given a good price. But at dealers Mr. Potts drew the line; not one of
them had ever set a foot upon that oaken stair. To the attics the place
was filled with this furniture and other articles such as books, china,
samplers with the glass broken, and I know not what besides, piled in
heaps upon the floor. Indeed where Mr. Potts slept was a mystery; either
it must have been under the counter in his shop, or perhaps at nights he
inhabited a worm-eaten Jacobean bedstead which stood in an attic, for
I observed a kind of pathway to it running through a number of legless
chairs, also some dirty blankets between the moth-riddled curtains.

Not far from this bedstead, propped in an intoxicated way against the
sloping wall of the old house, stood the clock which I desired. It was
one of the first "regulator" clocks with a wooden pendulum, used by the
maker himself to check the time-keeping of all his other clocks, and
enclosed in a chaste and perfect mahogany case of the very best style of
its period. So beautiful was it, indeed, that it had been an instance of
"love at first sight" between us, and although there was an estrangement
on the matter of settlements, or in other words over the question of
price, now I felt that never more could that clock and I be parted.

So I agreed to give old Potts the L20 or, to be accurate, L18 14s. which
he asked on the 10 per cent. rise principle, thankful in my heart that
he had not made it more, and prepared to go. As I turned, however, my
eye fell upon a large chest of the almost indestructible yellow cypress
wood of which were made, it is said, the doors of St. Peter's at Rome
that stood for eight hundred years and, for aught I know, are still
standing, as good as on the day when they were put up.

"Marriage coffer," said Potts, answering my unspoken question.

"Italian, about 1600?" I suggested.

"May be so, or perhaps Dutch made by Italian artists; but older than
that, for somebody has burnt 1597 on the lid with a hot iron. Not for
sale, not for sale at all, much too good to sell. Just you look inside
it, the old key is tied to the spring lock. Never saw such poker-work in
my life. Gods and goddesses and I don't know what; and Venus sitting
in the middle in a wreath of flowers with nothing on, and holding two
hearts in her hands, which shows that it was a marriage chest. Once it
was full of some bride's outfit, sheets and linen and clothes, and God
knows what. I wonder where she h