ened door, led him to Jan's
bedroom. It was a room that would persist in remaining obstinately damp,
and Jan, albeit not over careful of himself, judged it well to have an
occasional fire lighted. The room, seen by this light, looked
comfortable. The small, low, iron bed stood in the far corner; in the
opposite corner the bureau, as in Dr. West's time, the door opening to
the garden (never used now) between them, at the end of the room. The
window was on the side opposite the fire, a table in the middle. Jan was
then occupied in stirring the fire into a blaze, and its cheerful light
flickered on every part of the room.

"Good-evening, Mr. Jan."

Jan turned round, poker in hand, and stared amiably. "Law!" cried he.
"Who'd have thought it?"

The old word; the word he had learned at school--law. It was Jan's
favourite mode of expressing surprise still, and Lady Verner never could
break him of it. He shook hands cordially with Dr. West.

The doctor shut the door, slipping the bolt, and sat down to the fire.
Jan cleared a space on the table, which was covered with jars and glass
vases, cylinders, and other apparatus, seemingly for chemical purposes,
and took his seat there.

The doctor had taken a run home, "making a morning call, as it might be
metaphorically observed," he said to Jan. Just to have a sight of home
faces, and hear a little home news. Would Mr. Jan recite to him somewhat
of the latter?

Jan did so; touching upon all he could recollect. From John
Massingbird's return to Verner's Pride, and the consequent turning out
of Mr. Verner and his wife, down to the death of Sir Rufus Hautley; not
forgetting the pranks played by the "ghost," and the foiled expedition
of Mrs. Peckaby to New Jerusalem. Some of these items of intelligence
the doctor had heard before, for Jan periodically wrote to him. The
doctor looked taller, and stouter, and redder than ever, and as he
leaned thoughtfully forward, and the crimson blaze played upon his face,
Jan thought how like he was growing to his sister, the late Mrs. Verner.

"Mr. Jan," said the doctor, "it is not right that my nephew, John
Massingbird, should enjoy Verner's Pride."

"Of course it's not," answered Jan. "Only things don't go by rights
always, you know. It's but seldom they do."

"He ought to give it up to Mr. Verner."

"So I told him," said Jan. "I should, in his place."

"What did he say?"

"Say? Laughed at me, and called me green."

Dr. West sat thou