The one pale light did not give an idea of home ;
there was nothing of expectant welcome about
it; it rather suggested a weary and uncanny
wakefulness, and made the Doctor feel that he
ought to have been in bed hours before.
He let himself in with a great old-£ishioned
brass key, and toiled up the silent stairs, passing
out of the region of perpetual cabbage only
when he reached the third story.
He opened the door of his own private domain
with some apprehension ; but he found a bit of
fire still in the grate — 2, fire of anthracite, clink-
ery, gassy, and dull, yet capable of revivification,
and after a temporary eclipse under the blower,
it brightened up and gave forth warmth after its
kind.
The Doctor got into his slippers and his old
" house-coat," while the fire was rekindling, and,
late as it was, he lit his pipe and sat down with
his soles close to the grate, to look over the
papers in his pocket, for in addition to those he
had received from Mrs. Talbot, M. Goubaud had
seen fit to entrust to him a bundle of scrap-
books, letters and odd documents found in the
trunk with the theatrical raiment.
In the hour that he sat before the fire, he got
at no more than the bare outlines of a story that
in after years he was able to round out and fill
up ; but he had enough knowledge of the weak



1 8 THE MIDGE.
side of human nature to form in that brief
glance a judgment which better knowledge only
confirmed.
