agreeable to you if my brother smokes a pipe?" he asked.
"I tried to have our little drawing-room prepared for you, but the fire
has not been lit for so long that the room, I am afraid, is quite
impossible."

"Do let me stay here with you," she begged; "and I hope that both of you
will smoke. I am quite used to it."

John wheeled up an easy chair for her. Stephen, stiff and upright, sat
on the other side of the hearth. He took the tobacco-jar and pipe that
his brother had brought him, and slowly filled the bowl.

"With your permission, then, madam," he said, as he struck a match.

Louise smiled graciously. Some instinct prompted her to stifle her own
craving for a cigarette and keep her little gold case hidden in her
pocket. All the time her eyes were wandering around the room. Suddenly
she rose and, moving round the table, stood once more facing the row of
gloomy-looking portraits.

"So that is your grandfather," she remarked to John, who had followed
her. "Is your father not here?"

He shook his head.

"My father's portrait was never painted."

"Tell the truth, John," Stephen enjoined, rising in his place and
setting down his pipe. "Our father's portrait is not here, madam,
because he was one of those of whom I have spoken--one of those who were
drawn into the vortex of the city, and who knew only the shallow ways of
life. Listen!"

With a heavy silver candlestick in either hand, Stephen crossed the
room. He raised them high above his head and pointed to the pictures one
by one.

"John Robert Strangewey, our great-grandfather," he began. "That picture
was a presentation from the farmers of Cumberland. He, too, was a
magistrate, and held many public offices in the county.

"By his side is his brother, Stephen George Strangewey. For thirty-five
years he took the chair at the farmers' ordinary at Market Ketton on
every Saturday at one o'clock, and there was never a deserving man in
this part of the county, engaged in agricultural pursuits, who at any
time sought his aid in vain. They always knew where he was to be found,
and every Saturday, before dinner was served, there would be some one
there to seek his aid or advice. He lived his life to his own benefit
and to the benefit of his neighbors--the life which we are all sent here
to lead.

"Two generations before him you see my namesake, Stephen Strangewey. It
was he who invented the first threshing-machine used in this county. He
farmed the land that my