don't
like about the Duke's wig--the colour."

"I don't think I understand," I answered.

"I dare say he's got good reason to cover his ears, like King Midas,"
went on the priest, with a cheerful simplicity which somehow seemed
rather flippant under the circumstances. "I can quite understand that
it's nicer to cover them with hair than with brass plates or leather
flaps. But if he wants to use hair, why doesn't he make it look like
hair? There never was hair of that colour in this world. It looks more
like a sunset-cloud coming through the wood. Why doesn't he conceal the
family curse better, if he's really so ashamed of it? Shall I tell you?
It's because he isn't ashamed of it. He's proud of it"

"It's an ugly wig to be proud of--and an ugly story," I said.

"Consider," replied this curious little man, "how you yourself really
feel about such things. I don't suggest you're either more snobbish or
more morbid than the rest of us: but don't you feel in a vague way that
a genuine old family curse is rather a fine thing to have? Would you
be ashamed, wouldn't you be a little proud, if the heir of the Glamis
horror called you his friend? or if Byron's family had confided, to
you only, the evil adventures of their race? Don't be too hard on the
aristocrats themselves if their heads are as weak as ours would be, and
they are snobs about their own sorrows."

"By Jove!" I cried; "and that's true enough. My own mother's family had
a banshee; and, now I come to think of it, it has comforted me in many a
cold hour."

"And think," he went on, "of that stream of blood and poison that
spurted from his thin lips the instant you so much as mentioned his
ancestors. Why should he show every stranger over such a Chamber of
Horrors unless he is proud of it? He doesn't conceal his wig, he doesn't
conceal his blood, he doesn't conceal his family curse, he doesn't
conceal the family crimes--but--"

The little man's voice changed so suddenly, he shut his hand so sharply,
and his eyes so rapidly grew rounder and brighter like a waking owl's,
that it had all the abruptness of a small explosion on the table.

"But," he ended, "he does really conceal his toilet."

It somehow completed the thrill of my fanciful nerves that at that
instant the Duke appeared again silently among the glimmering trees,
with his soft foot and sunset-hued hair, coming round the corner of
the house in company with his librarian. Before he came within earshot,
F