token of grateful remembrance, and by no means as a reward for services
which cannot be compensated, a certain messuage, with all the land
thereto appertaining, situate in ---- Street, at the North End, so
called, of Boston, aforesaid, the same being the house in which I was
born, but now inhabited by several families, and known as 'the
Rookery.'" Iris had also the crucifix, the portrait, and the
red-jewelled ring. The funeral or death's-head ring was buried with
him.

It was a good while, after the Little Gentleman was gone, before our
boarding-house recovered its wonted cheerfulness. There was a flavor in
his whims and local prejudices that we liked, even while we smiled at
them. It was hard to see the tall chair thrust away among useless
lumber, to dismantle his room, to take down the picture of Leah, the
handsome Witch of Essex, to move away the massive shelves that held the
books he loved, to pack up the tube through which he used to study the
silent stars, looking down at him, like the eyes of dumb creatures,
with a kind of stupid half-consciousness, that did not worry him as did
the eyes of men and women,--and hardest of all to displace that sacred
figure to which his heart had always turned and found refuge, in the
feelings it inspired, from all the perplexities of his busy brain. It
was hard, but it had to be done.

And by-and-by we grew cheerful again, and the breakfast-table wore
something of its old look. The Koh-i-noor, as we named the gentleman
with the _diamond_, left us, however, soon after that "little mill," as
the young fellow John called it, where he came off second best. His
departure was no doubt hastened by a note from the landlady's daughter,
inclosing a lock of purple hair which she "had valued as a pledge of
affection, ere she knew the hollowness of the vows he had breathed,"