e lifted my head and sniffed it in the air. In queer places, too!
In the dark, shadowy streets of old towns which I have visited as a
commercial traveller, selling goods by day and wandering out alone by
night into the backwaters. I've felt the thrill there, Dick, trying to
look through the curtained windows of some of those lonely houses.
I've been brushed by a stranger in Fleet Street and felt it; looked
into a woman's mysterious eyes as she turned around, with a latchkey
in her hand, before a house in Bloomsbury. We shan't need to wander
far away, Richard."

"Seems to me," the latter observed, "that I am to play Man Friday
to--"

He suddenly stood rigid. He gripped his friend's arm, his lips a
little parted. He was listening in a paroxysm of subdued joy. From out
of the sitting-room window came faint sounds of melody.

"It's Nora," he murmured ecstatically. "It's the first time for years!
She's singing!"

He moved involuntarily towards the house. Jacob filled his pipe and
strolled across the way, homewards.

CHAPTER IV

Mr. Edward Bultiwell, of the House of Bultiwell and Sons, sat alone in
his private office, one morning a week or so later, and communed with
ghosts. It was a large apartment, furnished in mid-Victorian fashion,
and, with the exception of the telephone and electric light, destitute
of any of the modern aids to commercial enterprise. Oil paintings of
Mr. Bultiwell's father and grandfather hung upon the walls. A row of
stiff, horsehair chairs with massive frames stood around the room,
one side of which was glass-fronted, giving a view of the extensive
warehouse beyond. It was here that Mr. Bultiwell's ghosts were
gathered together,--ghosts of buyers from every town in the United
Kingdom, casting occasional longing glances towards where the
enthroned magnate sat, hoping that he might presently issue forth and
vouchsafe them a word or two of greeting; ghosts of sellers, too,
sellers of hides and skins from India and South America, Mexico and
China, all anxious to do business with the world-famed House of
Bultiwell. Every now and then the great man would condescend to
exchange amenities with one of these emissaries from distant parts.
Everywhere was stir and bustle. Every few minutes a salesman would
present himself, with a record of his achievements. All the time the
hum of voices, the clattering of chains, the dust and turmoil of
moving merchandise, the coming and going of human beings, al