The front part of the ground floor was used as an office of some kind in
those early days, but the middle part facing the long row of outhouses
was a human habitation. The rooms were so dark that a lamp had to be
used most of the day, and the principal entrance was direct from the
courtyard. An old workman and his wife lived there until the office in
front was changed into a coffee-house and those rooms toward the
courtyard became the kitchen. When it happened, some one told Keith's
mother a story which she in her turn conveyed to the boy.

History repeated itself, she said, and Keith already knew that history
was something that had happened before he was born. One hundred years
ago, when Gustavus III was king of Sweden and things were more exciting
than in these later days of outward and inward peace, there used also to
be a coffee-house on the ground floor, and a widely known one at that.
It occupied the floor above too, but this floor was in reality used as a
club, and the club was political and the men who frequented it were
conspiring against the government. This the police knew, and every so
often a lot of armed and uniformed men would surround the house and make
prisoners of those caught in the clubrooms on the second floor. But as a
rule no one was found there but a couple of sleepy and grouchy
attendants who cursed their luck at having to spend their lives in such
a dull place.

"But," Keith interrupted when the story got that far "you just told me
that the rooms had a lot of conspirators in them."

"So they had."

"And yet they were empty when the police came there? Do you really mean