ted this to himself, Musgrave went into the house and
drugged his mind correcting proofsheets--for the _Lichfield Historical
Association's Quarterly Magazine_--and brought down to the year 1805 his
"List of Wills Recorded in Brummell County."

IV

The night was well advanced when Charteris stepped noiselessly into the
room. The colonel was then sedately writing amid a host of motionless
mute watchers, for at Matocton most of the portraits hang in the East
Drawing-room.

Thus, above the great marble mantel,--carved with thyrsi, and supported
by proud deep-bosomed caryatides,--you will find burly Sebastian
Musgrave, "the Speaker," an all-overbearing man even on canvas. "Paint
me among dukes and earls with my hat on, to show I am in all things a
Republican, and the finest diamond in the Colony shall be yours," he had
directed the painter, and this was done. Then there is frail Wilhelmina
Musgrave--that famed beauty whose two-hundred-year-old story all
Lichfield knows, and no genealogist has ever cared to detail--eternally
weaving flowers about her shepherd hat. There, too, is Evelyn Ramsay,
before whose roguish loveliness, as you may remember, the colonel had
snapped his fingers in those roseate days when he so joyously considered
his profound unworthiness to be Patricia's husband. There is also the
colonial governor of Albemarle--a Van Dyck this--two Knellers, and
Lely's portrait of Thomas Musgrave, "the poet," with serious blue eyes
and flaxen hair. The painting of Captain George Musgrave, who
distinguished himself at the siege of Cartagena, is admittedly an
inferior piece of work, but it has vigor, none the less; and below it
hangs the sword which was presented to him by the Lord High Admiral.

So quietly did Charteris come that the colonel was not aware of his
entrance until the novelist had coughed gently. He was in a
dressing-gown, and looked unusually wizened.

"I saw your light," he said. "I don't seem to be able to sleep, somehow.
It is so infernally hot and still. I suppose there is going to be a
thunderstorm. I hate thunderstorms. They frighten me." The little man
was speaking like a peevish child.

"Oh, well--! it will at least clear the air," said Rudolph Musgrave.
"Sit down and have a smoke, won't you?"

"No, thanks." Charteris had gone to the bookshelves and was gently
pushing and pulling at the books so as to arrange their backs in a
mathematically straight line. "I thought I would borrow so