ef he ain' got de key! Whut yo' think ob dat
now?"

John Valiant was looking closely at the big key; for there were words,
which he had not noted before, engraved in the massive flange: _Friends
all hours._ He smiled. The sentiment sent a warm current of pleasure to
his finger-tips. Here was the very text of hospitality!

A Lilliputian spider-web was stretched over the preempted keyhole, and
he fetched a grass-stem and poked out its tiny gray-striped denizen
before he inserted the key in the rusted lock. He turned it with a
curious sense of timidity. All the strength of his fingers was necessary
before the massive door swung open and the leveling sun sent its late
red rays into the gloomy interior.

He stood in a spacious hall, his nostrils filled with a curious but not
unpleasant aromatic odor with which the place was strongly impregnated.
The hall ran the full length of the building, and in its center a wide,
balustraded double staircase led to upper darkness. The floor, where his
footprints had disturbed the even gray film of dust, was of fine close
parquetry and had been generously strewn everywhere with a mica-like
powder. He stooped and took up a pinch in his fingers, noting that it
gave forth the curious spicy scent. Dim paintings in tarnished frames
hung on the walls. From a niche on the break of the stairway looked down
the round face of a tall Dutch clock, and on one side protruded a huge
bulging something draped with a yellowed linen sheet. From its shape he
guessed this to be an elk's head. Dust, undisturbed, lay thickly on
everything, ghostly floating cobwebs crawled across his face, and a bat
flitted out of a fireplace and vanished squeaking over his head. With
Uncle Jefferson's help he opened the rear doors and windows, knocked up
the rusted belts of the shutters and flung them wide.

But for the dust and cobwebs and the strange odor, mingled with the
faint musty smell that pervades a sunless interior, the former owner of
the house might have deserted it a week ago. On a wall-rack lay two
walking-sticks and a gold-mounted hunting-crop, and on a great carved
chest below it had been flung an opened book bound in tooled leather.
John Valiant picked this up curiously. It was _Lucile_. He noted that
here and there passages were marked with penciled lines--some light and
femininely delicate, some heavier, as though two had been reading it
together, noting their individual preferences.

He laid it back musi