furniture designated to the bed-side; then with the help of a chair he
climbed to the top of it. He caught one of the tender-looking curtains
carefully between his hands, and was about to throw it over the
canopy, shutting his eyes and his mouth to exclude the possible dust,
when the cabinet beneath him suddenly groaned, swayed, and the next
moment there was a heavy crash, and he was groaning in the midst of
a dozen antique fragments. Harold sprang forward in some alarm and
picked him up. "By Jove!" he exclaimed, "I am afraid you are hurt; and
what a row I have made! I might have known better than to tell you to
trust your weight on that old thing."

Jones shook himself slowly, extended his arms and legs, announced
himself unhurt, and Dartmouth gave his attention to the cabinet. "I
shall have to initiate myself in my prospective father-in-law's good
graces by announcing myself a spoiler of his household goods," he
exclaimed, ruefully. "And a handsome old thing like that, too; it is
a shame!" He thrust his hands into his pockets and continued looking
down at the ruins with a quizzical smile on his face.

"By every law of romance and of precedent," he thought, "I ought to
find in that cabinet the traditional packet of old letters which would
throw a flood of light upon some dark and tragic mystery. Else why did
I tell Jones to stand upon that particular cabinet instead of that one
over there, which looks as if iron hammers could not break it; and why
did Jones blindly obey me? That it should be meaningless chance is
too flat to be countenanced. I should find the long lost Mss. of that
rhymer who took possession of me that night, and so save myself the
discomfort of being turned into a Temple of Fame a second time. Truly
there has been an element of the unusual throughout this whole affair
with Weir. Once or twice I have felt as if about to sail out of the