Lamps had certainly not the conventional
appearance of one, as he stood modestly rubbing his
squab nose with a handkerchief so exceedingly
oily, that he might have been in the act of mistaking
himself for one of his charges. He was
a spare man of about the Barbox Brothers time
of life, with his features whimsically drawn upward
as if they were attracted by the roots of
his hair. He had a peculiarly shining transparent
complexion, probably occasioned by constant
oleaginous application; and his attractive
hair, being cut short, and being grizzled,
and standing straight up on end as if it in its
turn were attracted by some invisible magnet
above it, the top of his head was not very
unlike a lamp-wick.

"But to be sure it's no business of mine,"
said Barbox Brothers. "That was an impertinent
observation on my part. Be what you like."

"Some people, sir," remarked Lamps, in a
tone of apology, "are sometimes what they
don't like."

"Nobody knows that better than I do,"
sighed the other. "I 'have been what I don't
like, all my life."

"When I first took, sir," resumed Lamps,
"to composing little Comic-Songs-like——-"

Barbox Brothers eyed him with great disfavour.

"——To composing little Comic-Songs——-like
and what was more hard——- to singing 'em afterwards,"
said Lamps, " it went against the
grain at that time, it did indeed."

Something that was not all oil here shining in
Lamps's eye, Barbox Brothers withdrew his
own a little disconcerted, looked at the fire,
and put a foot on the top bar. "Why did
you do it, then?" he asked, after a short pause;
abruptly enough but in a softer tone. "If
you didn't want to do it, why did you do
it? Where did you sing them? Public-
house?"

To which Mr. Lamps returned the curious
reply: " Bedside."

At this moment, while the traveller looked at
him for elucidation, Mugby Junction started
suddenly, trembled violently, and opened its
gas eyes. " She's got up!" Lamps announced,
excited. " What lays in her power is sometimes
more, and sometimes less; but it's laid in
her power to get up to-night, by George!"

The legend " Barbox Brothers" in large
white letters on two black surfaces, was very
soon afterwards trundling on a truck through
a silent street, and, when the owner of the
legend had shivered on the pavement half an
hour, what time the porter's knocks at the
Inn Door knocked up the whole town first,
and the Inn last, he groped his way into the
close air of a shut-up house, and so groped between
the sheets of a shut-up bed that seemed
to have been expressly refrigerated for him
when last made.

                                        II.

"You remember me, Young Jackson?"

"What do I remember if not you? You
are my first remembrance. It was you who
told me that was my name. It was you who
told me that on every twentieth of December my
life had a penitential anniversary in it called a
birthday. I suppose the last communication
was truer than the first!"

"What am I like, Young Jackson?"

"You are like a blight all through the year, to
me. You hard-lined, thin-lipped, repressive,
changeless woman with a wax mask on. You are
like the Devil to me; most of all when you teach
me religious things, for you make me abhor
them."

"You remember me, Mr. Young Jackson?"
In another voice from another quarter.

"Most gratefully, sir. You were the ray of
hope and prospering ambition in my life. When
I attended your course, I believed that I
should come to be a great healer, and I felt almost
happy—- even though I was still the one boarder
in the house with that horrible mask, and ate
and drank in silence and constraint with the
mask before me, every day. As I had done every,
every, every, day, through my school-time and
from my earliest recollection."

"What am I like, Mr. Young Jackson?"

"You are like a Superior Being to me. You
are like Nature beginning to reveal herself to
me. I hear you again, as one of the hushed
crowd of young men kindling under the power
of your presence and knowledge, and you bring
into my eyes the only exultant tears that ever
stood in them."

"You remember Me, Mr. Young Jackson?"
In a grating voice from quite another quarter.

"Too well. You made your ghostly appearance
in my life one day, and announced that
its course was to be suddenly and wholly
changed. You showed me which was my
wearisome seat in the Galley of Barbox
Brothers. (When they were, if they ever
were, is unknown to me; there was nothing of
them but the name when I bent to the oar.)
You told me what I was to do, and what to be
paid; you told me, afterwards, at intervals of
years, when I was to sign for the Firm, when I
became a partner, when I became the Firm. I
know no more of it, or of myself."

"What am I like, Mr. Young Jackson?"

"You are like my father, I sometimes think.
You are hard enough and cold enough so to
have brought up an unacknowledged son. I
see your scanty figure, your close brown suit,
and your tight brown wig; but you, too, wear a
wax mask to your death. You never by a
chance remove it——- it never by a chance falls off
——and I know no more of you."

Throughout this dialogue, the traveller spoke
to himself at his window in the morning, as he
had spoken to himself at the Junction overnight.
And as he had then looked in the darkness,
a man who had turned grey too soon, like
a neglected fire: so he now looked in the sunlight,
an ashier grey, like a fire which the brightness
of the sun put out.

The firm of Barbox Brothers had been some
offshoot or irregular branch of the Public
Notary and bill-broking tree. It had gained
for itself a griping reputation before the days of
Young Jackson, and the reputation had stuck