istory
of Crome, written at Crome, and printed at Crome by my own press."

"Shall we be allowed to read it now it's finished?" asked Denis.

Mr. Wimbush nodded. "Certainly," he said. "And I hope you will not find
it uninteresting," he added modestly. "Our muniment room is particularly
rich in ancient records, and I have some genuinely new light to throw on
the introduction of the three-pronged fork."

"And the people?" asked Gombauld. "Sir Ferdinando and the rest of
them--were they amusing? Were there any crimes or tragedies in the
family?"

"Let me see," Henry Wimbush rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I can only
think of two suicides, one violent death, four or perhaps five broken
hearts, and half a dozen little blots on the scutcheon in the way of
misalliances, seductions, natural children, and the like. No, on the
whole, it's a placid and uneventful record."

"The Wimbushes and the Lapiths were always an unadventurous, respectable
crew," said Priscilla, with a note of scorn in her voice. "If I were to
write my family history now! Why, it would be one long continuous blot
from beginning to end." She laughed jovially, and helped herself to
another glass of wine.

"If I were to write mine," Mr. Scogan remarked, "it wouldn't exist.
After the second generation we Scogans are lost in the mists of
antiquity."

"After dinner," said Henry Wimbush, a little piqued by his wife's
disparaging comment on the masters of Crome, "I'll read you an episode
from my History that will make you admit that even the Lapiths, in their
own respectable way, had their tragedies and strange adventures."

"I'm glad to hear it," said Priscilla.

"Glad to hear what?" asked Jenny, emerging suddenly from her private
interior world like a cuckoo from a clock. She received an explanation,
smiled, nodded, cuckooed at last "I see," and popped back, clapping shut
the door behind her.

Dinner was eaten; the party had adjourned to the drawing-room.

"Now," said Henry Wimbush, pulling up a chair to the lamp. He put on
his round pince-nez, rimmed with tortoise-shell, and began cautiously
to turn over the pages of his loose and still fragmentary book. He found
his place at last. "Shall I begin?" he asked, looking up.

"Do," said Priscilla, yawning.

In the midst of an attentive silence Mr. Wimbush gave a little
preliminary cough and started to read.

"The infant who was destined to become the fourth baronet of the name of
Lapith was born in the y