It seemed written, foreordained, Gwynne Peters used to say, half in amusement, half in distaste, that his grandfather's house should forever be either completely retired from notice, or else figure gaudily in the limelight of a publicity that would have caused its dignified founder untold wrath and mortification. "All that newspaper gabble about the Pallinders and the diamond necklace is to blame for this!" said Gwynne, when he read in the State Journal a week after the Charity Ball, a circumstantial account under flaming headlines of how "the mansion of the late Governor Gwynne, the historic landmark in the suburbs of our city, on Richmond Avenue, not far from the junction of the Lexington and Amherst car-lines, now occupied by the well-known society leaders, Colonel and Mrs. William Pallinder, was the objective-point of a burglarious attack last night about 12 P. M." It appeared that the burglarious attack had failed! the diamonds were still safe—as, indeed, the thief whom "our vigilant and efficient Chief of Police, Captain O'Brien, in spite of every effort, had not yet been able to locate." Friends of the family would be relieved to hear that Mrs. Pallinder's venerable mother, Mrs. Jacob Botlisch, had experienced no ill effects from this exciting midnight episode; Mrs. Pallinder herself, on the contrary, was quite prostrated, and could not see one of the innumerable reporters who besieged the house. "It's a perfect persecution," Gwynne announced with unwonted heat, having called the next day to inquire, and been ushered into a parlourful of these gentry. "Here were all those fellows roosting about like vultures—and the greatest racket and confusion! Just as if poor Mrs. Pallinder hadn't been lying upstairs sick with the fright and worry. She—she's a very delicate, sensitive woman, you know," said the young man, with the easy flush that showed so over his thin, fair-skinned face. He left his card, and not long after the florist's boy came to the back door, having received express instructions not to ring the bell and annoy Mrs. Pallinder, with one of those large pasteboard boxes, wherein for all their prosaic look, so much romance is carted about the world. Truly a red-faced lad with a cold in the nose, and patches of alien materials applied to prominent parts of his trousers, is an odd figure to be employed upon these sentimental errands—yet such are all florists' boys. A reporter pounced on this one as he strolled jauntily around the house, whistling in a high and cheery fashion under his burden. "What you got there, Johnny?" said this inquiring gentleman. "Vi'lets." "Who for?" "S'Pallinder." "Well, who from then?" "Dunno. They're five dollars a hundred." The maid took them in, and doubtless Mrs. Pallinder's delicate and sensitive nature was greatly soothed by the tribute.

The colonel showed himself most genial and accessible. Interviews a column in length and photographs of everything and everybody concerned graced the front pages of the Journal, the Record, the Evening Despatch. A complete history of the old Gwynne house up to date was "featured." The reporters even approached Gwynne for a "few words." Templeton saw himself in print to his huge gratification: "Mr. Virgil H. Templeton, who has controlled the destinies of the Gwynne property for many years, was seen at his office No. 16a Wayne Street, and says——" Templeton bought an armful of copies of the paper and sent them about with blue pencillings around the paragraph. "His office! Well, I like that!" said Judge Lewis, in mock indignation.

"Thank you, I thank you for your kind inquiries, gentlemen," said Colonel Pallinder, as he received the newspaper cohorts. "Mrs. Pallinder is resting easily, and will be recovered in a few days, I think, from the nervous shock. It was what I may call a nerve-racking adventure for a woman. My daughter, I am thankful to say, is in Washington, visiting some relations of ours, the Lees and Randolphs. I have telegraphed her not to worry when she sees the papers. She left last night on the nine o'clock train; as it happened, two of our young friends, Mr. J. B. Taylor and Mr. Johns, had driven down to the depot with her to see her off, after dining here, and came back in the carriage at my request to spend the night. We had all retired, when about midnight my wife, who is a sufferer from severe neuralgic headaches, got up, feeling one coming on, and went into our daughter's room, in search of some bromide which generally gives her relief. She did not light the gas, and was groping for the bottle in the dark when she felt a strong draught of cold air from an open window. She says her only thought was: 'How careless of Mazie to leave that window open! Now my head will be worse than ever!' and was going toward the window to close it, when, with a scuffle, up jumps this scoundrel directly in front of her! She says it was as if the floor had opened and belched him up at her feet. She screamed—I trust, gentlemen, I shall never hear such another cry of terror as my wife gave!" said the colonel fervently. "I sprang out of bed, and rushed to the spot just in time to see the fellow scrambling through the window. Most unfortunately, I had no weapon, or I think I may safely say that would have been the last time he ever went hunting for diamond necklaces. The window is on the south side of the house; as you observe there is a vine growing on a frame directly in front of it all the way up to the roof, by which he climbed up and down. We found his tracks all around in the damp ground at the bottom, but lost them in the turf at a short distance from the house. Nothing but the very strong sentiment I have for the owners of the place, which, I need hardly remind you, belongs to one of the finest old families in the State, and especially for my dear young friend Mr. Peters, whose boyhood days were passed here—nothing but that feeling prevents me from having the vine uprooted and the trellis torn away. The family, as is natural, are very much attached to everything about their old home. Well, as I was saying, in as short time as we could manage, the young men and I got our clothes on, called the cook and housemaid to look after my wife and her mother, and young Taylor and I set out to explore the grounds, leaving Mr. Johns here to protect the house. We searched high and low without success, and down by the gate fell in with Doctor Vardaman and his man Huddesley just starting out on a tour of exploration on their own hook. It seems that the doctor's man had waked some little while before, thinking he heard a noise in their hen-house; and as you know we are a little uncomfortably near Bucktown[4] here—my own servants are coloured, for that matter—Huddesley thought he'd better investigate. He told us he got up and looked out of the window, and distinctly saw a man walking rapidly away from the rear part of the doctor's lot where it joins the Gwynne property, in the direction of this house—or, at any rate, making for the park entrance, with something under his arm which Huddesley is positive was a chicken, but which was much more likely, I think, to have been a kit or bundle of burglars' tools. Well, then, gentlemen," Colonel Pallinder continued, pulling at his goatee with a sly smile, "Huddesley got himself partly dressed, and started out very courageously with the kitchen poker; but, getting as far as the gate, the park looking pretty gloomy and forbidding, and the night rather dark, he concluded discretion was the better part of valour, and turned back and aroused the doctor. We joined forces and fairly raked the premises, but to no purpose—the rascal had made too good use of his time, and we, of course, had had some unavoidable delays. I wrote a note to the Chief of Police, and sent my coachman down with it, and we all went to bed again. As you see, it's a very simple story, and hardly deserves your trouble. My own theory is that the thief, probably some well-known criminal whom they will have no trouble in catching, passing through town, or perhaps, making a casual stay here—that sort of gentry never have any home—read about Mrs. Pallinder's jewels in the papers, and thought he might make a good haul.

"Now I consider that you gentlemen are partly to blame for that, and I bear no malice, only I wish you'd be a little more particular. Now if you'll just correct one report: Mrs. Pallinder's necklace did not cost five thousand dollars. It cost—ah—well, gentlemen, it was a present to my wife on our last wedding anniversary, and to let the cat out of the bag, it was bought with the surplus of a little flyer in Phosphate I took—now I beg you won't say anything about that in the papers—you might say, with entire truth, that it did not cost five thousand dollars. The necklace and earrings together came to more than that, and I believe I bought her some other trinket at the time, a brooch or something—but the whole business was not more than eight or nine thousand, and no one item was quite as much as five. Now if you'll just revise that statement, I'd be obliged. Sam, bring the whisky."

J. B., reading the colonel's version slightly condensed, with the truth about the diamonds carefully set forth, chuckled freely. "Well," he said. "That was about the way it happened. But you ought to have heard old Mrs. Botlisch! She indulged in very meaty language, I never heard meatier, not even from a darky roustabout on the levee at New Orleans—you know somebody said she'd been cook on a canal-boat, and I declare I shouldn't wonder if that were true. She was mad at being waked up, mad at 'Mirandy,' mad at 'Bill,' mad at Teddy and me, and the thief and the diamonds and everything else. But let me tell you about Pallinder. We started out to ransack the park; you know how it was last Tuesday, a cold, sleety January night, without any snow falling, or we could have followed the fellow's tracks. As it was we just had to go prowling around the walls, and into the shrubbery. I had an old bird-gun of the colonel's, that hadn't been fired for years. It was a muzzle-loader, with a kind of sawed-off barrel, and I'll bet it would scatter like a charge of bribery in the State Legislature. Pallinder hadn't anything but one of these little light rattan canes. When we got down to the gate, somebody bounced out of hiding and ''Alt!' says he, in a shrill voice. ''Alt!' That fellow Huddesley is English, you know, and drops his h's; he's an awfully funny little chap. Well, I ''alted.' I was taken by surprise, and I didn't want to let fly with my blunderbuss without knowing what it was all about. But what do you think Pallinder did? Walked right up to him, took him by the collar and pulled him out—yes, sir, that's what the colonel did, without hesitating one instant. Pretty cool, I call it, for a man of his age, practically unarmed, with a lame leg. Of course, I wasn't frightened; there was nothing to frighten anybody, and besides I had a gun; but I wasn't sharp and ready like the colonel; I hesitated. But Pallinder walked right up, collared him and pulled him forward. 'Come out o' that!' says he. 'Who are you?' 'Oh, Lord, Colonel Pallinder, sir, is it you?' says Huddesley, trembling all over. He was the worst scared man you ever saw. 'Hi didn't know you. The doctor will be 'ere in two twos, sir. 'E told me to 'alt hanybody Hi saw.' And then along came Doctor Vardaman with a lantern. 'What on earth is all this?' he said. 'Is this your chicken-thief, Huddesley?'

"As we went back to the house, I said to the colonel: 'That was rather startling, wasn't it, being shouted at to halt that way?' He laughed and said yes, it reminded him of a time he rode head foremost into the Yankee pickets one night—'when both armies were manoeuvring around the Potomac basin—not very long before Chancellorsville, you know. I was carrying despatches,' he said. I asked him what he did. 'Well, I guess I did about two-forty, and it wasn't over a very good track either!' he said and laughed again. 'I lit right out. They shot my horse. I wasn't lame then, though.' And I couldn't get another word out of him. I wish he'd talk simply like that all the time," the young man added, thoughtfully. "Instead of gassing around so much."

J. B. himself declined to be interviewed—amiably enough, but still he declined. And Doctor Vardaman was another to whom the reporters appealed in vain. "The circumstances are exactly as Colonel Pallinder related them," he said to the only one whom he would consent to see. "And there is really nothing for me to say. I had gone to bed when my man Huddesley pounded on the door and called me. I got up and found him breathless, and very much excited; he was half-dressed, had been out of doors, and as I could see, was badly frightened. One cannot expect heroic behaviour in a man of his calibre, and on the whole I think he showed a very good spirit. As soon as I understood what he had seen, I ordered him to go outside and wait until I got my clothes on, and to challenge anyone he might see about the park gate, for I immediately suspected that my chicken-house would not offer much inducement to a thief alongside of Mrs. Pallinder's diamonds. The man has been quite sick since from exposure and excitement. I wish you a very good-day, sir."

And with this the Journal man and others had to be content. Huddesley himself would doubtless have been more expansive, but the honest fellow went to bed with a serious sore throat and cold the day after the attempted robbery, and could not leave his room for a week. Mrs. Maginnis held sway in the doctor's kitchen, dispensing unlimited tea and gossip to the grocers' men, milkmen, postmen, even the baffled reporters and "plain-clothes," or uniformed detectives that called in shoals for days. "The docthor won't see yez," she told the latter, "so it's no use askin'. An' as for Misther Huddesley, he's on th' flat of his back, an' can't raise his voice above a whisper. Annyway, he says he couldn't swear to th' man, if it was to save his immorrtal sowl. It was too dark, an' he only saw 'twas a man gallivantin' around where he'd no business. It's a foine-spurted bye he was to go afther that thievin', murderin' divil with th' poker, an' I'm glad th' docthor's got him instid of that drunken spalpeen he had befure; him that got on a tear, I mane, an' wint up to th' big house with a knife yellin' an' swearin' he'd cut th' hearrt out of iverybody—bad scran to him! It's turrible lot of men th' docthor's had intoirely."

She was right; it was a terrible lot of men the doctor had had. The picturesque ruffian of whom she spoke had been dismissed by the old gentleman a fortnight before at the close of a spree in which he had taken it into his drunken head to invade the Pallinder kitchen, menacing the panic-struck maids with a cleaver and demanding more liquor. To him succeeded Huddesley; I never saw the latter except on one occasion, but he became a familiar figure to most of us, and Doctor Vardaman was rather fond of telling how he acquired the only good servant he ever had. The doctor (according to his own narrative) after having at great expense of time and trouble and some personal risk, got rid of the highly emotional person with the cleaver who was haled off screeching and shackled in a patrol-wagon; and after having gone downtown and seen the wretch cared for in Saint Francis' Hospital, inserted his usual advertisement in the State Journal, "Wanted—by a physician (retired) living in the suburbs, an unmarried man to take entire charge of his house and garden. Must be experienced in cooking and indoor-work. References required. Dr. John Vardaman, 201 Richmond Avenue. Take Lexington and Amherst Street cars."

The clerk in the Journal office who took it in grinned at sight of him. "Guess we'll have to give you a rebate on your subscription, Doctor," he said cheerfully. "This is the third time this has gone in since last July. So long! Happy New Year!"

A day or so later the doctor was sitting in the homely disorder of his library, reading a new book, when the washerwoman who came in by the day during these periods of storm and stress, stuck her towelled head around the door. "Doc'thor, yer honour!"

Doctor Vardaman did not answer, did not even hear; he was in an enchantment, his lips moving unconsciously as he read. The beauty of the lines stirred him with an almost painful sense of enjoyment.

"Ah, thin, Docthor, asthore!"

read the doctor aloud. He looked up vaguely, still under the spell. "What is it, Mrs. Maginnis?"

"Here's a man to see yez about th' pla-ace."

Doctor Vardaman clapped Omar shut briskly. In the phrase of a poet as yet unknown to the world, he turned a keen, untroubled face, Home to the instant need of things. "Send him in." The man came in, closed the door quietly, and stood at attention while the doctor examined him. It was evident that he was a little nervous, yet respectfully anxious to conceal it.

"What is your name?"

"James Huddesley, sir."

"You have a reference?"

Huddesley produced a worn letter and handed it over. The doctor read it through carefully. It certified that the bearer of this, James Huddesley, was honest, sober and capable; he had lived with the writer four years as butler, and fifteen months as valet and general man.

"This is dated two years back," said the doctor, as he returned it. "Was that your last place?"

"For steady work—yes, sir."

"Why did you leave it? And what have you been doing in the meantime?"

"If you please, sir," said Huddesley, looking down. "Hi've 'ad misfortunes. Hi left 'is lordship, thinkin' to better myself by settin' hup in a small way—in a pub., sir. It was no go, sir, Hi 'adn't 'ad the experience, and Hi didn't like the life. Hi lost my money, hall Hi'd saved hup, and—and——" He hesitated, fingering his hat. "And 'a little that was my wife's, if you'll hexcuse me mentioning my haffairs, sir. Then she went back to 'er people, and—Hi just come away, Hi couldn't stand it."

"I didn't want a married man," said the doctor reluctantly.

"It's just the same as bein' single, sir, beggin' yer parding," said Huddesley, staring out of the window. "She won't never come back to me no more—she said so. And there wasn't any children—'e died, the baby did."

The doctor was touched oddly by this sordid little romance of the kitchen and backstairs. Perhaps certain long, long dead and buried hopes, dreams, disappointments of his own stirred, faintly responsive beneath their graves; oh, that grim, arid little cemetery walled off in some corner of every heart! Ghosts walk about it, and we call them Regrets.

"What have you been doing since?" the old man asked gently.

"Nothing much, sir—hodd jobs, waitin' in heating-'ouses, and such-like," Huddesley answered openly. "'Tain't what Hi've been used to, but Hi can turn my 'and to most anything. Hi saw the paper, and Hi thought Hi'd like to get with a gentleman again; there was hanother hadvertisement in from the big 'ous hup there with the pillars, that Hi hinquired habout—but Hi found they don't 'ave nobody but coloured."

Mrs. Pallinder recalled this circumstance afterwards, with some regret. "He was here quite a while," she said. "The cook told me making inquiries in the kitchen—but I didn't see him. Such a pity—the coloured servants wouldn't have minded, but you can't expect a white man to sit down with them, you know. Well," she would conclude with her charming smile, "if I couldn't have him, I don't know of anybody I'd rather see him with than Doctor Vardaman." The doctor put a few more questions for form's sake, and ended by engaging Huddesley on the spot. "As to his references," he said, "I never troubled to look them up. A man like that is his own reference. Lord What's-his-Name of Berkeley Square, London, and What's-his-Name's Hall, Yorks, was a trifle too far off for me to bombard him with letters about a servant whom he had probably entirely forgotten. I'll risk Huddesley."

The event justified him; never had the doctor lived in such comfort—never, that is, since the death of his spinster sister, some years before. His boots and broadcloth showed the ex-valet's ministrations; the old gentleman gave choice little dinners; it was his turn to send dainties about amongst his friends. The only fault he ever found in Huddesley was a certain sour aversion to society for which, as Doctor Vardaman remarked, the man could hardly be blamed. "He never takes a day out, and won't look at a woman," said the doctor. "Most men of his class, after such an experience, take for a while at least to drink, or other reprehensible courses. And indeed I suspect that Huddesley didn't put in all of that dismal two years in the chaste occupations of waiting in heating-'ouses, and hother hodd jobs. But I don't want to push the inquiry. After all, he's had a pretty hard time for a young man—he's not over thirty, I think—what would you have? We're none of us saints."