ng-room, where he looked vaguely about for his mother's
tambour-frame which was not in its place beside the window. Hither, an
instant later, came Piotr, announcing, respectfully:

"The large room above has been prepared for your Excellency. The trunks
are all unpacked.--At what hour shall I serve the tea--and where?"

Ivan started, looked about him dazedly, and realized that he had not
eaten since early morning, though the hour was now past four. Then he
said, rather wearily: "Tea here, Piotr, in an hour. After that I will
see you and Sosha. Meantime, let me be left absolutely alone. I want to
go over the whole house. See that I meet no one."

"Your Excellency is obeyed." And Piotr had bowed and was gone.

Ivan flung hat, gloves and stick upon the table, and then looked slowly
round once more.--Twenty-one years since his mother had gazed on these
familiar walls?--Impossible! Two decades of other lives intervening
between him and the summer in which sad-eyed Sophia had secretly watched
the coming of her hideous Octopus of disease? Nay! He would not let that
thought endure. But every trace of intrusion must be put away: if,
indeed, it had left a trace. At least the belongings of his mother, now
removed, must come back. He should dwell here with her beside him, in
his heart, always!--But certainly this room, save for the tambour and
scattered wools, was quite unchanged: roughly-tinted buff walls,
polished floor, with its delicately faded Persian rug, heavy chairs and
sofa, ay, the very spindle-legged table near the bay, were all here,
forming the old ensemble. It was almost incredible.--But Ivan had
discounted the penetration of those servants who, in the long ago, had
loved their lady as now they loved her son.

With a heart violently throbbing, a throat painfully knotted under the
strain of associations long cherished in the inner sanctum of his
memory, Ivan passed slowly through the long, cold drawing-room towards
the staircase at its farthest end, and so, slowly, upward. As of old,
the slippery stairs were uncarpeted; and his heart jumped anew as his
eyes met the thing they sought: a small, round knot-hole, in a corner of
the seventh step, which had been filled in with a piece of wood rather
darker than the rest, and which, as a boy, he had been possessed to cut
out with his knife, only to be inevitably caught at and punished after
each attempt.

At the head of the stairs still stood the great, oaken chest, the b