of bells stole gradually into the stillness of the room like a tuneful
whisper.

My unpacking had been watched over by the servant who had come to help
me, and, for the most part, had been standing attentive but unnecessary
at the door of the room. I did not want him in the least, but I did not
like to tell him to go away. He was a young fellow, certainly more than
ten years younger than myself; I had not been--I won't say in that place
but within sixty miles of it, ever since the year '67; yet his guileless
physiognomy of the open peasant type seemed strangely familiar. It was
quite possible that he might have been a descendant, a son or even a
grandson, of the servants whose friendly faces had been familiar to me
in my early childhood. As a matter of fact he had no such claim on my
consideration. He was the product of some village near by and was there
on his promotion, having learned the service in one or two houses as
pantry-boy. I know this because I asked the worthy V-- next day. I might
well have spared the question. I discovered before long that all the
faces about the house and all the faces in the village: the grave faces
with long moustaches of the heads of families, the downy faces of the
young men, the faces of the little fair-haired children, the handsome,
tanned, wide-browed faces of the mothers seen at the doors of the huts
were as familiar to me as though I had known them all from childhood,
and my childhood were a matter of the day before yesterday.

The tinkle of the traveller's bels, after growing louder, had faded away
quickly, and the tumult of barking dogs in the village had calmed down
at last. My uncle, lounging in the corner of a small couch, smoked his
long Turkish chibouk in silence.

"This is an extremely nice writing-table you have got for my room," I