Though dusted once a week, they were never moved, and it was years
later before they were found to have settled permanently into the
varnish of the table. In extremely uncostly frames on the wall were
the coffin-plates of the departed members of the family. It was the
custom at Sanger to honour the dead by bringing back from the funeral
the name-plate and framing it on a black background with some supposed
appropriate scripture text.

The general atmosphere of the room was dusty and religious as it
was never opened except on Sundays or when the parson called, which
instituted a sort of temporary Sunday, and the two small windows were
kept shut and plugged as well as muffled always, with green paper
blinds and cotton hangings. It was a thing apart from the rest of the
house--a sort of family ghost-room: a chamber of horrors, seen but
once a week.

But it contained one thing at least of interest--something that at
once brought Sam and Yan together. This was a collection of a score
of birds' eggs. They were all mixed together in an old glass-topped
cravat box, half full of bran. None of them were labelled or properly
blown. A collector would not have given it a second glance, but it
proved an important matter. It was as though two New Yorkers, one
disguised as a Chinaman and the other as a Negro, had accidently
met in Greenland and by chance one had made the sign of the secret
brotherhood to which they both belonged.

"Do you like these things?" said Yan, with sudden interest and warmth,
in spite of the depressing surroundings.

"You bet," said Sam. "And I'd a-had twice as many only Da said it was