CHAPTER III 



MR GIVEEN 



Drumgool was a bachelor's, or rather, a 

 widower's household. The dining-room, where 

 dead-and-gone Frenchs looked at one another from 

 dusty canvases, was rarely used, the drawing-room 

 never. Guns and fishing-rods found their way 

 into the sitting-room, which had once been the 

 Hbrary, and still held books enough to lend a per- 

 fume of mildew and leather to the place, a perfume 

 that mixed not unpleasantly with the smell of 

 cigar smoke and the scent of the sea. 



The house hummed with the sound of the sea; 

 fling a window open and the roar of it came in and 

 the smell of it, better than the smell of roses. 



Room after room of Drumgool, had you 

 knocked at the doors of them, would have 

 answered you only with echoes. 



" Here there was laughter of old, 

 There was weeping — " 



Laughter there was none now, nor weeping, just 

 silence, dust ; old furniture so used by the sea air 

 that a broker's man would scarcely have taken the 

 trouble to take possession of it. 



In the sitting-room, which was also the Hbrary 



of Drumgool, on the morning of the day on which 



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