e somewhere or other in
this horrid old chimney."

"And if he can't prove that; what, then?"

"Why then, old man," with a stately air, "I shall say little more about
it."

"Agreed, wife," returned I, knocking my pipe-bowl against the jamb, "and
now, to-morrow, I will for a third time send for Mr. Scribe. Wife, the
sciatica takes me; be so good as to put this pipe on the mantel."

"If you get the step-ladder for me, I will. This shocking old chimney,
this abominable old-fashioned old chimney's mantels are so high, I can't
reach them."

No opportunity, however trivial, was overlooked for a subordinate fling
at the pile.

Here, by way of introduction, it should be mentioned, that besides the
fireplaces all round it, the chimney was, in the most haphazard way,
excavated on each floor for certain curious out-of-the-way cupboards and
closets, of all sorts and sizes, clinging here and there, like nests in
the crotches of some old oak. On the second floor these closets were
by far the most irregular and numerous. And yet this should hardly have
been so, since the theory of the chimney was, that it pyramidically
diminished as it ascended. The abridgment of its square on the roof
was obvious enough; and it was supposed that the reduction must be
methodically graduated from bottom to top.

"Mr. Scribe," said I when, the next day, with an eager aspect, that
individual again came, "my object in sending for you this morning
is, not to arrange for the demolition of my chimney, nor to have
any particular conversation about it, but simply to allow you
every reasonable facility for verifying, if you can, the conjecture
communicated in your note."

Though in secret not a little crestfallen, it may be, by my phlegmatic
reception, so different from what he had looked for; with much apparent
alacrity he commenced the survey; throwing open the cupboards on the
first floor, and peering into the closets on the second; measuring
one within, and then comparing that measurement with the measurement
without. Removing the fireboards, he would gaze up the flues. But no
sign of the hidden work yet.

Now, on the second floor the rooms were the most rambling conceivable.
They, as it were, dovetailed into each other. They were of all shapes;
not one mathematically square room among them all--a peculiarity which
by the master-mason had not been unobserved. With a significant, not to
say portentous expression, he took a circuit of the chimney,