“Not business in the ordinary sense, ma’am,” he answered.  “But there’s kin of mine lying in more than one graveyard just by, and it’s a fancy of my own to take a look at their resting-places, d’ye see, and to wander round the old quarters where they lived.  And while I’m doing that, it’s a quiet, and respectable, and a comfortable lodging I’m wanting.”

I could see that the sentiment in his speech touched my mother, who was fond of visiting graveyards herself, and she turned to Mr. James Gilverthwaite with a nod of acquiescence.

“Well, now, what might you be wanting in the way of accommodation?” she asked, and she began to tell him that he could have that parlour in which they were talking, and the bedchamber immediately above it.  I left them arranging their affairs, and went into another room to attend to some of my own, and after a while my mother came there to me.  “I’ve let him the rooms, Hugh,” she said, with a note of satisfaction in her voice which told me that the big man was going to pay well for them.  “He’s a great bear of a man to look at,” she went on, “but he seems quiet and civil-spoken.  And here’s a ticket for a chest of his that he’s left up at the railway station, and as he’s tired, maybe you’ll get somebody yourself to fetch it down for him?”

I went out to a man who lived close by and had a light cart, and sent him up to the station with the ticket for the chest; he was back with it before long, and I had to help him carry it up to Mr. Gilverthwaite’s room.  And never had I felt or seen a chest like that before, nor had the man who had fetched it, either.  It was made of some very hard and dark wood, and clamped at all the corners with brass, and underneath it there were a couple of bars of iron, and though it was no more than two and a half feet square, it took us all our time to lift it.  And when, under Mr. Gilverthwaite’s orders, we set it down on a stout stand at the side of his bed, there it remained until—­but to say until when would be anticipating.

Now that he was established in our house, the new lodger proved himself all that he had said.  He was a quiet, respectable, sober sort of man, giving no trouble and paying down his money without question or murmur every Saturday morning at his breakfast-time.  All his days were passed in pretty much the same fashion.  After breakfast he would go out—­you might see him on the pier, or on the old town walls, or taking a walk across the Border Bridge; now and then we heard of his longer excursions into the country, one side or other of the Tweed.  He took his dinner in the evenings, having made a special arrangement with my mother to that effect, and a very hearty eater he was, and fond of good things, which he provided generously for himself; and when that episode of the day’s events was over, he would spend an hour or two over the newspapers, of which he was a great reader, in company with his cigar and his glass.  And I’ll say for him that from first to last he never put anything out, and was always civil and polite, and there was never a Saturday that he did not give the servant-maid a half-crown to buy herself a present.