ing. You know, before the end people often lose
control over themselves and make absurd requests. Don't pay any
attention to them, Eustace. Good-by!" and he held out his hand. Eustace
took it. It remained in his a fraction of a second longer than he had
expected, and gripped him with a virility that was surprising. There
was, too, in its touch a subtle sense of intimacy.

"Why, uncle!" he said, "I shall see you alive and well for many long
years to come."

Two months later Adrian Borlsover died.

II

Eustace Borlsover was in Naples at the time. He read the obituary notice
in the _Morning Post_ on the day announced for the funeral.

"Poor old fellow!" he said. "I wonder where I shall find room for all
his books."

The question occurred to him again with greater force when three days
later he found himself standing in the library at Borlsover Conyers, a
huge room built for use, and not for beauty, in the year of Waterloo by
a Borlsover who was an ardent admirer of the great Napoleon. It was
arranged on the plan of many college libraries, with tall, projecting
bookcases forming deep recesses of dusty silence, fit graves for the old
hates of forgotten controversy, the dead passions of forgotten lives. At
the end of the room, behind the bust of some unknown eighteenth-century
divine, an ugly iron corkscrew stair led to a shelf-lined gallery.
Nearly every shelf was full.

"I must talk to Saunders about it," said Eustace. "I suppose that it
will be necessary to have the billiard-room fitted up with book cases."

The two men met for the first time after many weeks in the dining-room
that evening.

"Hullo!" said Eustace, standing before the fire with his hands in his
pockets. "How goes the world, Saunders? Why these dress togs?" He
himself was wearing an old shooting-jacket. He did not believe in
mourning, as he had told his uncle on his last visit; and though he
usually went in for quiet-colored ties, he wore this evening one of an
ugly red, in order to shock Morton the butler, and to make them thrash
out the whole question of mourning for themselves in the servants' hall.
Eustace was a true Borlsover. "The world," said Saunders, "goes the same
as usual, confoundedly slow. The dress togs are accounted for by an
invitation from Captain Lockwood to bridge."

"How are you getting there?"

"I've told your coachman to drive me in your carriage. Any objection?"

"Oh, dear me, no! We've had all things in common for fa