each shaven cheek. A few wisps of thin gray hair were brushed smoothly
across the top of his bald head. His face, which must have been
beautiful in its day, had preserved in age the harmonious simplicity
of its lines. What amazed me was its even, almost deathlike pallor. He
seemed to me to be prodigiously old. A faint smile, a mere momentary
alteration in the set of his thin lips acknowledged my blushing
confusion; and I became greatly interested to see him reach into the
inside breastpocket of his coat. He extracted therefrom a lead pencil
and a block of detachable pages, which he handed to my uncle with an
almost imperceptible bow.

"I was very much astonished, but my uncle received it as a matter
of course. He wrote something at which the other glanced and nodded
slightly. A thin wrinkled hand--the hand was older than the face--patted
my cheek and then rested on my head lightly. An un-ringing voice, a
voice as colourless as the face itself, issued from his sunken lips,
while the eyes, dark and still, looked down at me kindly.

"'And how old is this shy little boy?'"

"Before I could answer my uncle wrote down my age on the pad. I was
deeply impressed. What was this ceremony? Was this personage too great
to be spoken to? Again he glanced at the pad, and again gave a nod, and
again that impersonal, mechanical voice was heard: 'He resembles his
grandfather.'

"I remembered my paternal grandfather. He had died not long before. He,
too, was prodigiously old. And to me it seemed perfectly natural that
two such ancient and venerable persons should have known each other in
the dim ages of creation before my birth. But my uncle obviously had