invitation he relapsed into silence, and picked up another fork.

When dinner was over I excused myself from sitting with the two elder
men over their wine--Mr. Cazalette, whom by that time I, of course,
knew for a Scotchman, turned out to have an old-fashioned taste for
claret--and joined Miss Raven in the hall, a great, roomy, shadowy
place which was evidently popular. There was a great fire in its big
hearth-place with deep and comfortable chairs set about it; in one of
these I found her sitting, a book in her hand. She dropped it as I
approached and pointed to a chair at her side.

"What do you think of that queer old man?" she asked in a low voice as I
sat down. "Isn't there something almost--what is it?--uncanny?--about
him?"

"You might call him that," I assented. "Yes--I think uncanny would fit
him. A very marvellous man, though, at his age."

"Aye!" she exclaimed, under her breath. "If I could live to see it, it
wouldn't surprise me if he lived to be four hundred. He's so queer. Do
you know that he actually goes out early--very early--in the morning
and swims in the open sea?"

"Any weather?" I suggested.

"No matter what the weather is," she replied. "He's been here three
weeks now, and he has never missed that morning swim. And sometimes
the mornings have been Arctic--more than I could stand, anyway, and
I'm pretty well hardened."

"A decided character!" I said musingly. "And somehow, he seems to fit
in with his present surroundings. From what I have seen of it, Mr.
Raven was quite right in telling me that this house was a museum."

I was looking about me as I spoke. The big, high-roofed hall, like
every room I had so far seen, was filled from floor to ceiling with
books, pictures, statuary, armour, curiosities of every sort and of
many ages. The prodigious numbers of the books alone showed me that I
had no light task in prospect. But Miss Raven shook her head.

"Museum!" she exclaimed. "I should think so! But you've seen
nothing--wait till you see the north wing. Every room in that is
crammed with things--I think my great-uncle, who left all this to
Uncle Francis recently, must have done nothing whatever but buy, and
buy, and buy things, and then, when he got them home, have just dumped
them down anywhere! There's some order here," she added, looking
round, "but across there, in the north wing, it's confusion."

"Did you know your great-uncle?" I asked.

"I? No!" she replied. "Oh, dear me, no! I