Widdershins

seldom took the trouble to strike a balance, or to compute how far, at forty-four years of age, he was behind his points on the handicap. To have done

without nobility and generosity and disinterestedness was no life for him. Only quite recently, and rarely, had he even vaguely suspected that there was more in it than this; but it was no good anticipating the day when, he supp

h the insurance marks built into its brick merely i

rooms furnished and unfurnished, he had been accustomed to do many things for himself, and he had discovered that it saves time and temper to be methodical. He had arranged with the wife of the long-nosed Barrett, a stout Welsh woman with a falsetto voice, the Merionethshire accen

a little over this closet; then, as its use occurred to him, he smiled faintly, a little moved, he knew not by what.... He would have to put it to a very different purpose from its original one; it would probably have to serve as his larder.... It was in this closet that he made a discovery. The back of it was shelved, and, rummaging on an upper shelf that ran deeply into the wall, Oleron found a couple of mushroom-shaped ol

lopment, and it must have its own length and time. In the workroom he had recently left he had been making excellent progress; Romilly had begun, as the saying is, to speak and act of herself; and he did not doubt she would continue to do so the moment the distraction of his removal was over. This distraction was almost ov

-book. He totted them up, and his monk-like face grew thoughtful. His installation had cost him more than he

on. "But it would have been a pity to spoil the place for the want of ten pounds o

s papers t

with their carts and cries; at midday the children, returning from school, trooped into the square and swung on Oleron's gate; and when the children had departed again for afternoon school, an itinerant musicia

had stood under the farther window, whether from the centre moulding of the light lofty ceiling had depended a glimmering crystal chandelier, or where the tambour-frame or the picquet-table had stood....

ke at half-past four in the afternoon;

ome minutes he even contemplated the breac

jolly day of white and blue, with a gay noisy wind and a subtle turn in the colour of growing things; and over and over again, once or twice a minute, his room became suddenly light and then subdued again, as the s

tings. For a time he succeeded in persuading himself that in making these memoranda he was really working; then he rose and began to pace his room. As he did so, he was struck by an idea. It was that the place might possibly be a little better for more positive

tered, as he went for a two-foot and began to

ly changed to one of interest and attention. Present

window-boxes, nailed up. We must look into this! Yes,

ll, was another. The seats of all had been painted, repainted, and painted again; and Oleron's investigating finger had barely detected the

the chisel cautiously under the seat, he started the whole lid slightly. Again using the penknife, he

little myst

omy cellarage to the garrets above a flock of echoes seemed to awake; and the sound got a little on Oleron's nerves. All at once he paused, fetched a duster, and muffled the mallet.... When the edge was sufficiently raised he put his fingers unde

uld have fancied there might have been. "Romilly will still h

to the sec

, was empty; but from the second seat of his sitting-room he drew out something yielding and folded and furred over an

it was an irregular, a very irregular, triangle, and it had a couple of wide flaps, with the remains of straps and buckles. The patch that had been upper

he stood surveying it.... "I give it up. Whatever

began to scrape and to wash and to line with paper his newly discovered receptacles. When he had finished, he put his spare boots and books and papers into them;