the railway, to look up and down the Line (it
passed before the house) with the air of a man
accomplishing a self-imposed task of which
nothing was expected to come. This done, he
would cross the road again, and turning on
the threshold to take a final sniff of air,
disappeared once more within the house, bolting
and chaining the door again as if there were
no probability of its being reopened for at least
a week. Yet half an hour had not passed before
he was out in the road again, sniffing the
air and looking up and down the Line as before.

It was not very long before I managed to
scrape acquaintance with this restless
personage. I soon found out that my friend
with the shirt-frill was the confidential
servant, butler, valet, factotum, what you will,
of a sick gentleman, a Mr. Oswald Strange,
who had recently come to inhabit the house
opposite, and concerning whose history my
new acquaintance, whose name I ascertained
was Masey, seemed disposed to be somewhat
communicative. His master, it appeared, had
come down to this place, partly for the sake of
reducing his establishment—- not, Mr. Masey was
swift to inform me, on economical principles,
but because the poor gentleman, for particular
reasons, wished to have few dependents about
him partly in order that he might be near his
old friend, Dr. Garden, who was established
in the neighbourhood, and whose society and
advice were necessary to Mr. Strange's life. That
life was, it appeared, held by this suffering gentleman
on a precarious tenure. It was ebbing
away fast with each passing hour. The servant
already spoke of his master in the past tense,
describing him to me as a young gentleman not
more than five-and-thirty years of age, with a
young face, as far as the features and build of it
went, but with an expression which had nothing
of youth about it. This was the great peculiarity
of the man. At a distance he looked younger
than he was by many years, and strangers, at
the time when he had been used to get about,
always took him for a man of seven or eight-and-
twenty, but they changed their minds on getting
nearer to him. Old Masey had a way of his
own of summing up the peculiarities of his
master, repeating twenty times over: " Sir, he
was Strange by name, and Strange by nature,
and Strange to look at into the bargain."

It was during my second or third interview
with the old fellow that he uttered the
words quoted at the beginning of this plain
narrative.

"Not such a thing as a looking-glass in all
the house," the old man said, standing beside
my piece of timber, and looking across reflectively
at the house opposite. " Not one."

"In the sitting-rooms, I suppose you mean?"

"No, sir, I mean sitting-rooms and bedrooms
both; there isn't so much as a shaving-glass as
big as the palm of your hand anywhere."

"But how is it?" I asked. " Why are there
no looking-glasses in any of the rooms?"

"Ah, sir!" replied Masey, " that's what none
of us can ever tell. There is the mystery. It's
just a fancy on the part of my master. He
had some strange fancies, and this was one of
them. A pleasant gentleman he was to live
with, as any servant could desire. A liberal
gentleman, and one who gave but little trouble;
always ready with a kind word, and a kind deed,
too, for the matter of that. There was not a
house in all the parish of St. George's (in which
we lived before we came down here) where the
servants had more holidays or a better table kept;
but, for all that, he had his queer ways and his
fancies, as I may call them, and this was one of
them. And the point he made of it, sir," the old
man went on; " the extent to which that regulation
was enforced, whenever a new servant was
engaged; and the changes in the establishment
it occasioned! In hiring a new servant, the
very first stipulation made, was that about the
looking-glasses. It was one of my duties to explain
the thing, as far as it could be explained,
before any servant was taken into the house.
' You'll find it an easy place,'I used to say, ' with
a liberal table, good wages, and a deal of leisure;
but there's one thing you must make up your
mind to; you must do without looking-glasses
while you're here, for there isn't one in the
house, and, what's more, there never will be.'"

"But how did you know there never would
be one?" I asked.

"Lor' bless you, sir! If you'd seen and
heard all that I'd seen and heard, you could
have no doubt about it. Why, only to take
one instance:—- I remember a particular day
when my master had occasion to go into the
housekeeper's room, where the cook lived, to
see about some alterations that were making,
and when a pretty scene took place. The cook
—- she was a very ugly woman, and awful vain—-
had left a little bit of a looking-glass, about six
inches square, upon the chimney-piece; she had
got it surreptious, and kept it always locked up;
but she'd left it out, being called away suddenly,
while titivating her hair. I had seen the glass,
and was making for the chimney-piece as fast
as I could; but master came in front of it
before I could get there, and it was all over in a
moment. He gave one long piercing look
into it, turned deadly pale, and seizing the
glass, dashed it into a hundred pieces on
the floor, and then stamped upon the fragments
and ground them into powder with his
feet. He shut himself up for the rest of
that day in his own room, first ordering me
to discharge the cook, then and there, at a
moment's notice."

"What an extraordinary thing!" I said,
pondering.

"Ah, sir," continued the old man, "it was
astonishing what trouble I had with those
women-servants. It was difficult to get any
that would take the place at all under the
circumstances. ' What not so much as a mossul
to do one's 'air at?' they would say, and they'd
go off, in spite of extra wages. Then those who
did consent to come, what lies they would tell,
to be sure! They would protest that they
didn't want to look in the glass, that they never