unset. The
Cambridge flats showed the sad, sodden yellow of meadows stripped bare
after a long sleep under snow; the hills, the naked trees, the spires
and roofs had a black outline, as if they were objects in a landscape
of the French school.

The whim seized Lapham to test the chimney in the music-room; it had
been tried in the dining-room below, and in his girls' fireplaces
above, but here the hearth was still clean. He gathered some shavings
and blocks together, and kindled them, and as the flame mounted gaily
from them, he pulled up a nail-keg which he found there and sat down to
watch it. Nothing could have been better; the chimney was a perfect
success; and as Lapham glanced out of the torn linen sash he said to
himself that that party, whoever he was, who had offered to buy his
house might go to the devil; he would never sell it as long as he had a
dollar. He said that he should pull through yet; and it suddenly came
into his mind that, if he could raise the money to buy out those West
Virginia fellows, he should be all right, and would have the whole game
in his own hand. He slapped himself on the thigh, and wondered that he
had never thought of that before; and then, lighting a cigar with a
splinter from the fire, he sat down again to work the scheme out in his
own mind. He did not hear the feet heavily stamping up the stairs, and
coming towards the room where he sat; and the policeman to whom the
feet belonged had to call out to him, smoking at his chimney-corner,
with his back turned to the door, "Hello! what are you doing here?"

"What's that to you?" retorted Lapham, wheeling half round on his
nail-keg.

"I'll show you," said the officer, advancing upon him, and then
stopping short as he recognised him. "Why, Colonel Lapham! I thought
it was some tramp got in here!"

"Have a cigar?" said Lapham hospitably. "Sorry there ain't another
nail-keg."

The officer took the cigar. "I'll smoke it outside. I've just come
on, and I can't stop. Tryin' your chimney?"

"Yes, I thought I'd see how it would draw, in here. It seems to go
first-rate."

The policeman looked about him with an eye of inspection. "You want to
get that linen window, there, mended up."

"Yes, I'll speak to the builder about that. It can go for one night."

The policeman went to the window and failed to pin the linen together
where Lapham had failed before. "I can't fix it." He looked round once
more, and saying, "Well, g