o be
fathomed, put to shame your costly one. Not infrequently I take to
pieces a fine clock or watch and fail to find anything the matter with
it, and yet it will not go as it should. The creatures actually seem to
be stubborn and take notions just as people do."

"I'd no idea clocks were like that," mused Christopher.

"That's because you haven't lived with them more than half a century as
I have," the old man returned in friendly fashion. "I've summered and
wintered them, you see, for fifty years and know their tricks and their
manners. But this clock of Richard Parsons has no such caprices. It is a
fine, sensible clock that goes faithfully about its business unless
hindered by the lack of a rivet or a drop of oil. Just now its chimes
are bothering; but we'll have them right after a little."

"Has it chimes?"

"Aye, surely. It has eight bells, though it is a small clock for the
table or mantelpiece. The people of 1700 loved music and so did the
clockmakers. Therefore clocks like this, that would play a different
tune every day of the week, were in great demand. Maybe you never
happened to see an old bracket clock of the long ago."

"No, I never did." Christopher shook his head.

"I'll go and fetch it. To tell you the truth, I put it away so it
shouldn't be a temptation to me. Otherwise I'd be fussing with it and
letting commonplace things such as this go."

McPhearson rose and shuffled away, only to return a few moments later
carrying the bracket clock by its brass handle.

"So you never saw an old fellow like this, eh?" inquired he with evident
satisfaction.

"No. I certainly never saw a clock with a brass handle on top to carry
it by," confessed Christopher.

"And what do you say to its glass back and its beautifully chased
works?" McPhearson turned his treasure round. "It was made to set on a
table you see, or before the mirror that hung above the fireplace, in
either of which spots the back of it would show almost as much as the
front. Therefore its works were engraved, that one side should be quite
as pleasing as the other."

"It's a beauty, isn't it?"

[Illustration: "So you never saw an old fellow like this, eh?"
_Page_ 24.]

"Well, you won't see many like it," the Scotchman asserted proudly. "Not
but what a good number of them were turned out in England between 1670
and 1750. But that was a long while ago, and things get scattered and
are crowded out by newer fashions; besides, antiqu