f the naval
engagements he had taken part in, and on the oak staircase a tattered
flag still hung, a trophy of unremembered victory.

But they were past and forgotten. The hands which had arranged their
memorials with such pride and love had long since gone down to idleness,
and forgetfulness also. Who cared for the family legends now? They, too,
had gone down into silence. There was no one to tell Dare that the old
blue enamel bowl in the hall, in which he gave Faust refreshment, had
been brought back from the loot of the Winter Palace of Pekin; or that
the drawer in the Reisener table in the drawing-room was full of
treasured medals and miniatures, and that the key thereof was rusting in
a silver patch-box on the writing-table.

The iron-clamped boxes in the lumber-room kept the history to themselves
of all the silver plate that had lived in them once upon a time,
although the few odd pieces remaining hinted at the splendor of what had
been. In one corner of the dining-room the mahogany tomb still stood of
a great gold racing cup, under the portrait of the horse that had won
it; but the cup had followed the silver dinner service, had followed the
diamonds, had followed in the wake of a handsome fortune, leaving the
after generations impoverished. If their money is taken from them, some
families are left poor indeed, and to this class the Dares belonged. It
is curious to notice the occasional real equality underlying the
apparent inequality of different conditions of life. The unconscious
poverty, and even bankruptcy, of some rich people in every kind of
wealth except money affords an interesting study; and it seems doubly
hard when those who have nothing to live upon, and be loved and
respected for, except their money, have even that taken from them. As
Dare wandered through the deserted rooms the want of money of his
predecessors, and consequently of himself, was borne in upon him. It
fell like a shadow across his light pleasure-loving soul. He had
expected so much from this unlooked-for inheritance, and all he had
found was a melancholy house with a past.

He went aimlessly through the hall into the library. It was there that
his uncle had lived; there that he had been found when death came to
look for him; among the books which he had been unable to carry away
with him at his departure; rare old tomes and first editions, long
shelves of dead authors, who, it is to be hoped, continue to write in
other worlds for