"And who was Henry G. Surface?" inquired Mr. Queed.

"What! You haven't heard that infamous story!" cried the Major, with
the surprised delight of the inveterate raconteur who has unexpectedly
stumbled upon an audience.

A chair-leg scraped, and Professor Nicolovius was standing, bowing in
his sardonic way to Mrs. Paynter.

"Since I have happened to hear it often, madam, through Major Brooke's
tireless kindness, you will perhaps be so good as to excuse me."

And he stalked out of the room, head up, his auburn goatee stabbing the
atmosphere before him, in rather a heavy silence.

"Pish!" snapped the Major, when the door had safely shut. And tapping
his forehead significantly, he gave his head a few solemn wags and
launched upon the worn biography of Henry G. Surface.

Tattered with much use as the story is, and was, the boarders listened
with a perennial interest while Major Brooke expounded the familiar
details. His wealth of picturesque language we may safely omit, and
briefly remind the student of the byways of history how Henry G. Surface
found himself, during the decade following Appomattox, with his little
world at his feet. He was thirty at the time, handsome, gifted,
high-spirited, a brilliant young man who already stood high in the
councils of the State. But he was also restless in disposition,
arrogant, over-weeningly vain, and ambitious past all belief--"a yellow
streak in him, and we didn't know it!" bellowed the Major. Bitterly
chagrined by his failure to secure, from a legislature of the early