he foot of
the long stairway; some one alighted and exchanged a friendly word or
two with the driver, for in that lonely part of the town it was pleasant
to hear the sound of one's own voice even if one was guiltily conscious
of making conversation; then with a cheerful "Good-night," this some-one
climbed the steps while the vehicle hurried away with its jumble of
hoofs and wheels. A key was heard at the outer door; the door sagged a
little in common with everything about the house--and a tenant passed
into the Eyrie.

Enter Paul Clitheroe, sole scion of that melancholy house whose
foundations had sunk under him, and left him, at the age of five and
twenty, master of himself, but slave to fortune.

In the dim light he closed and fastened the outer door; from a hall
scarcely large enough for two people to pass in, he entered the inner
room with the confident step of a familiar. Having deposited hat, cane
and ulster in their respective places--there was a place for everything
or it would have been quite impossible to abide in that snuggery--he
sank into one of the easy chairs, rolled a cigarette with meditative
deliberation, lighted it and blew the smoke into the moonlight where it
assumed a thousand fantastic forms.

The silence of the room seemed emphasized by the presence of its
occupant; he was one who under no circumstances was likely to disturb
the serenity of a house. In most cases a single room takes on the
character of the one who inhabits it; this is invariably the case where
the apartment is in the possession of a woman; but turn a man loose in a
room, and leave him to himself for a season, and he will have made of
that room a witness strong enough to condemn or condone him on the Last
Day; the whole character of the place will gradually change until it has
become an index to the man's nature; where this is not the case, the man
is without noticeable characteristics.

Those who knew Paul Clitheroe, the solitary at the Eyrie, would at once
recognize this room as his abode; those of his friends who saw this room
for the first time, without knowing it to be his home, would say: "Paul
Clitheroe would fit in here." A kind of harmonious incongruity was the
chief characteristic of the man and his solitary lodging.

He sat for some time as silent as the inanimate objects in that
singularly silent room. An occasional turn of the wrist, the momentary
flash of the ash at the end of his cigarette, the smoke-wreath flo