istory only his hobby; he was indeed, among
other things, the solicitor and agent of the Prior's Park estate.
But he himself was far from drowsy and seemed remarkably wide awake,
with shrewd and prominent blue eyes, and red hair brushed as neatly
as his very neat costume. The latter, whose name was Leonard Crane,
came straight from a crude and almost cockney office of builders and
house agents in the neighboring suburb, sunning itself at the end of
a new row of jerry-built houses with plans in very bright colors and
notices in very large letters. But a serious observer, at a second
glance, might have seen in his eyes something of that shining sleep
that is called vision; and his yellow hair, while not affectedly
long, was unaffectedly untidy. It was a manifest if melancholy truth
that the architect was an artist. But the artistic temperament was
far from explaining him; there was something else about him that was
not definable, but which some even felt to be dangerous. Despite his
dreaminess, he would sometimes surprise his friends with arts and
even sports apart from his ordinary life, like memories of some
previous existence. On this occasion, nevertheless, he hastened to
disclaim any authority on the other man's hobby.

"I mustn't appear on false pretences," he said, with a smile. "I
hardly even know what an archaeologist is, except that a rather
rusty remnant of Greek suggests that he is a man who studies old
things."

"Yes," replied Haddow, grimly. "An archaeologist is a man who
studies old things and finds they are new."

Crane looked at him steadily for a moment and then smiled again.

"Dare one suggest," he said, "that some of the things we have been
talking about are among the old things that turn out not to be old?"

His companion also was silent for a moment, and the smile on his
rugged face was fainter as he replied, quietly:

"The wall round the park is really old. The one gate in it is
Gothic, and I cannot find any trace of destruction or restoration.
But the house and the estate generally--well the romantic ideas read
into these things are often rather recent romances, things almost
like fashionable novels. For instance, the very name of this place,
Prior's Park, makes everybody think of it as a moonlit mediaeval
abbey; I dare say the spiritualists by this time have discovered the
ghost of a monk there. But, according to the only authoritative
study of the matter I can find, the place was simply c