re--perhaps five-and-twenty. What a daft old codger I be getting,
surely! No wonder them new lights puts a bushel over me."

"No," I replied; "you are simply showing great power of memory, Stixon.
And now please to tell me, as soon as you can, who it was--a tall man,
remember, and a handsome one, with dark hair, perhaps, or at any rate
dark eyes--who resembled (perhaps not very closely, but still enough to
mislead at a distance) my dear father--Master George, as you call him,
for whose sake you are bound to tell me every thing you know. Now try to
think--do please try your very best, for my sake."

"That I will, miss; that I will, with all my heart, with all my mind,
with all my soul, and with all my strength, as I used to have to say
with my hands behind my back, afore education were invented. Only please
you to stand with your chin put out, miss, and your profield towards me.
That is what brings it up, and nothing else at all, miss. Only, not to
say a word of any sort to hurry me. A tracherous and a deep thing is the
memory and the remembrance."

Mr. Stixon's memory was so deep that there seemed to be no bottom to it,
or, at any rate, what lay there took a very long time to get at. And I
waited, with more impatience than hope, the utterance of his researches.

"I got it now; I got it all, miss, clear as any pictur'!" the old man
cried out, at the very moment when I was about to say, "Please to leave
off; I am sure it is too much for you." "Not a pictur' in all of our
gallery, miss, two-and-fifty of 'em, so clear as I see that there man,
dark as it was, and a heavy wind a-blowing. What you call them things,
miss, if you please, as comes with the sun, like a face upon the water?
Wicked things done again the will of the Lord, and He makes them fade
out afterwards."

"Perhaps you mean photographs. Is that the word?"

"The very word, and no mistake. A sinful trespass on the works of God,
to tickle the vanity of gals. But he never spread himself abroad like
them. They shows all their ear-rings, and their necks, and smiles. But
he never would have shown his nose, if he could help it, that stormy
night when I come to do my duty. He come into this house without so much
as a 'by your leave' to nobody, and vexed me terrible accordingly. It
was in the old lord's time, you know, miss, a one of the true sort, as
would have things respectful, and knock down any man as soon as look.
And it put me quite upon the touch-and-go, bei