floods."

"I dare say you never saw an onyx clock floating around," I replied a
little sharply. I had no sense of humor that day. He stopped smiling
at once, and stood tugging at his mustache.

"No," he admitted. "An onyx clock sinks, that's true. That's a very
nice little point, that onyx clock. He may be trying to sell it, or
perhaps--" He did not finish.

I went back immediately, only stopping at the market to get meat for
Mr. Reynolds' supper. It was after half past five and dusk was coming
on. I got a boat and was rowed directly home. Peter was not at the
foot of the steps. I paid the boatman and let him go, and turned to go
up the stairs. Some one was speaking in the hall above.

I have read somewhere that no two voices are exactly alike, just as no
two violins ever produce precisely the same sound. I think it is what
they call the timbre that is different. I have, for instance, never
heard a voice like Mr. Pitman's, although Mr. Harry Lauder's in a
phonograph resembles it. And voices have always done for me what odors
do for some people, revived forgotten scenes and old memories. But the
memory that the voice at the head of the stairs brought back was not
very old, although I had forgotten it. I seemed to hear again, all at
once, the lapping of the water Sunday morning as it began to come in
over the door-sill; the sound of Terry ripping up the parlor carpet,
and Mrs. Ladley calling me a she-devil in the next room, in reply to
this very voice.

But when I got to the top of the stairs, it was only Mr. Howell, who