There was not much in the study. A few shelves of books--not all learned
books by any means--three chairs, one of them a rocker cushioned in a
cheerful red; a battered old desk; a broad and rather comfortable looking
couch: this was nearly all the study's furniture. There was a fireplace
with a crumbling old hearth-stone, and usually a roaring fire within; and
a chimney-piece above, where stood a few photographs and some odd-looking
articles of apparently small value. On the walls were two small
portraits--of an elderly man and woman.

This was absolutely all there was in the room worth mentioning--except
when Brown was in it. Then, of course, there was Brown. This is not a
truism, it is a large, significant fact. When you had once seen Brown in
his study you knew that the room would be empty when he was out of it, no
matter who remained. Not that Brown was such a big, broad-shouldered,
dominating figure of a man. He was so tall and thin of figure that he
looked almost gaunt, and so spare and dark of face that he appeared
almost austere. Yet when you observed him closely he did not seem really
austere, for out of his eyes, of a clear, deep gray, looked not only
power but sympathy, and not only patience but humour. His mouth was
clean-cut and strong, and it could smile in a rather wonderful way. As to
the years he had spent--they might have been thirty, or forty, or twenty,
according to the hour in which one met him. As a matter of fact he was,
at the beginning of this history, not very far along in the thirties,
though when that rather wonderful smile of his was not in evidence one
might have taken him for somewhat older.

I had forgotten. Besides Brown when he was in the study there was
usually, also, Bim. Also long and lean, also brown, with a rough, shaggy
coat and the suggestion of collie blood about him--though he was plainly