amesake; of that Ned was very
sure.

"That's good. I'll write him," declared Mr. James Harding. "I'll write
him tomorrow."

He did write--but not so soon as Billy wrote; for even as he spoke,
Billy, in her lonely little room at the other end of the town, was
laying bare all her homesickness in four long pages to "Dear Uncle
William."

CHAPTER II

"THE STRATA"

Bertram Henshaw called the Beacon Street home "The Strata." This annoyed
Cyril, and even William, not a little; though they reflected that, after
all, it was "only Bertram." For the whole of Bertram's twenty-four years
of life it had been like this--"It's only Bertram," had been at once the
curse and the salvation of his existence.

In this particular case, however, Bertram's vagary of fancy had some
excuse. The Beacon Street house, the home of the three brothers, was a
"Strata."

"You see, it's like this," Bertram would explain airily to some new
acquaintance who expressed surprise at the name; "if I could slice off
the front of the house like a loaf of cake, you'd understand it better.
But just suppose that old Bunker Hill should suddenly spout fire and
brimstone and bury us under tons of ashes--only fancy the condition of
mind of those future archaeologists when they struck our house after
their months of digging!

"What would they find? Listen. First: stratum number one, the top floor;
that's Cyril's, you know. They'd note the bare floors, the sparse but
heavy furniture, the piano, the violin, the flute, the book-lined walls,
and the absence of every sort of curtain, cushion, or knickknack. 'Here
lived a plain man,' they'd say; 'a scholar, a musician, stern, unloved
and unloving; a monk.'

"And what next? They'd strike William's stratum next, the third floor.
Imagine it! You know William as a State Street broker, well-off,
a widower, tall, angular, slow of speech, a little bald, very much
nearsighted, and the owner of the kindest heart in the world. But really
to know William, you must know his rooms. William collects things. He
has always collected things--and he's saved every one of them. There's a
tradition that at the age of one year he crept into the house with four
small round white stones. Anyhow, if he did, he's got them now. Rest
assured of that--and he's forty this year. Miniatures, carved ivories,
bugs, moths, porcelains, jades, stamps, postcards, spoons, baggage tags,
theatre programs, playing-cards--there isn't anything that he