"Help yourself to whatever'll pay you for a month," he exclaimed. "And
don't be afraid--there's a lot more where that came from."

But my mother laughed, and motioned him to put up his money.

"Nay, nay, sir!" said she. "There's no need. And all I'm asking at you is
just to know who it is I'm taking in. You'll be having business in the
town for a while?"

"Not business in the ordinary sense, ma'am," he answered. "But there's
kin of mine lying in more than one graveyard just by, and it's a fancy of
my own to take a look at their resting-places, d'ye see, and to wander
round the old quarters where they lived. And while I'm doing that, it's a
quiet, and respectable, and a comfortable lodging I'm wanting."

I could see that the sentiment in his speech touched my mother, who was
fond of visiting graveyards herself, and she turned to Mr. James
Gilverthwaite with a nod of acquiescence.

"Well, now, what might you be wanting in the way of accommodation?" she
asked, and she began to tell him that he could have that parlour in which
they were talking, and the bedchamber immediately above it. I left them
arranging their affairs, and went into another room to attend to some of
my own, and after a while my mother came there to me. "I've let him the
rooms, Hugh," she said, with a note of satisfaction in her voice which
told me that the big man was going to pay well for them. "He's a great
bear of a man to look at," she went on, "but he seems quiet and
civil-spoken. And here's a ticket for a chest of his that he's left up at
the railway station, and as he's tired, maybe you'll get somebody
yourself to fetch it down for him?"

I went out to a man who lived close by and had a light cart, and sent him
up to the station with the ticket for the chest; he was back with it
before long, and I had to help him carry it up to Mr. Gilverthwaite's
room. And never had I felt or seen a chest like that before, nor had the
man who had fetched it, either. It was made of some very hard and dark
wood, and clamped at all the corners with brass, and underneath it there
were a couple of bars of iron, and though it was no more than two and a
half feet square, it took us all our time to lift it. And when, under Mr.
Gilverthwaite's orders, we set it down on a stout stand at the side of
his bed, there it remained until--but to say until when would be
anticipating.

Now that he was established in our house, the new lodger proved himself
all that he ha