year to the Professor for life, with remainder to Lucy, then a
small girl of ten. It was at this critical moment that Braddock
became a practical man for the first and last time in his dreamy
life. He buried his wife with unfeigned regret--for he had been
sincerely attached to her in his absent-minded way--and sent
Lucy to a Hampstead boarding school. After an interview with his
late wife's lawyer to see that the income was safe, he sought for
a house in the country, and quickly discovered Gartley Grange,
which no one would take because of its isolation. Within three
months from the burial of Mrs. Braddock, the widower had removed
himself and his collection to Gartley, and had renamed his new
abode the Pyramids. Here he dwelt quietly and enjoyably--from
his dry-as-dust point of view--for ten years, and here Lucy
Kendal had come when her education was completed. The arrival of
a marriageable young lady made no difference in the Professor's
habits, and he hailed her thankfully as the successor to her
mother in managing the small establishment. It is to be feared
that Braddock was somewhat selfish in his views, but the fixed
idea of archaeological research made him egotistical.

The mansion was three-story, flat-roofed, extremely ugly and
unexpectedly comfortable. Built of mellow red brick with dingy
white stone facings, it stood a few yards back from the roadway
which ran from Gartley Fort through the village, and, at the
precise point where the Pyramids was situated, curved abruptly
through woodlands to terminate a mile away, at Jessum, the local
station of the Thames Railway Line. An iron railing, embedded in
moldering stone work, divided the narrow front garden from the
road, and on either side of the door--which could be reached by
five shallow steps--grew two small yew trees, smartly clipped