thing glimmered. Really this might become in time very stupid.

He was startled, however, while dressing, to see from his windows that
the great banqueting hall was illuminated, but on coming down was amused
to find his dinner served on a small table in its oaken solitude lit
by the large electric chandelier--for Stukeley Castle under its present
lord had all the modern improvements--shining on the tattered banners
and glancing mail above him. It was evidently the housekeeper's reading
of some written suggestion of her noble master. The Barbarian, in a
flash of instinct, imagined the passage:--

"Humor him as a harmless lunatic; the plate is quite safe."

Declining the further offer of an illumination of the picture gallery,
grand drawing-room, ball-room, and chapel, a few hours later he found
himself wandering in the corridor with a single candle and a growing
conviction of the hopelessness of his experiment. The castle had as yet
yielded to him nothing that he had not seen before in the distraction of
company and the garishness of day. It was becoming a trifle monotonous.
Yet fine--exceedingly; and now that a change of wind had lifted the
fog, and the full moon shone on the lower half of the pictures of the
gallery, starting into the most artificial simulation of life a number
of Van Dyke legs, farthingales, and fingers that would have deceived
nobody, it seemed gracious, gentle, and innocent beyond expression.
Wandering down the gallery, conscious of being more like a ghost than
any of the painted figures, and that they might reasonably object to
him, he wished he could meet the original of one of those pictured
gallants and secretly compare his fingers with the copy. He remembered
an embroidered pair of gloves in a cabinet and a suit of armor on the
wall that, in measurement, did not seem to bear out the delicacy of the
one nor the majesty of the other. It occurred to him also to satisfy a
yearning he had once felt to try on a certain breastplate and steel cap
that hung over an oaken settle. It will be perceived that he was getting
a good deal bored. For thus caparisoned he listlessly, and, as will
be seen, imprudently, allowed himself to sink back into a very modern
chair, and give way to a dreamy cogitation.

What possible interest could the dead have in anything that was here?
Admitting that they had any, and that it was not the LIVING, whom the
Barbarian had always found most inclined to haunt the past, would