In the kitchen, which was the living-room of the house, John halted, and brought a chair for his visitor, and prepared to play the host as well as he could; but the visitor seemed, for some reason, not to fancy the kitchen.  He looked around with keen, searching eyes, scanning every nook and corner in the bare little room.  Truly, there was not much to see.  The old fireplace had been blocked up, and in its place was the usual iron cooking-stove, with a meagre array of pots and pans hanging behind it.  The floor was bare; the furniture, a table and chair, with a stool for John.  There was no provision for guests; but that did not matter, as Mr. Scraper never had guests.  Altogether, there was little attraction in the kitchen, and the Skipper seemed curiously displeased with its aspect.

“There is no other room?” he asked, after completing his survey.  “No better room than this, Colorado?  Surely, there must be one other; yes, of course!” he added, as if struck by a sudden thought.  “His shells?  Mr. Scraper has shells.  They are—­where?”

He paused and looked sharply at the boy.  Little John coloured high.  “The—­the shells?” he stammered.  “Yes, of course, sir, the shells are in another room, in the parlour; but—­but—­I am not let go in there, unless Mr. Scraper sends me.”

“So!” said the dark man; “but for me, Colorado, how is it for me?  Mr. Scraper never said to me that I must not go in this parlour, you see.  For you it is well, you do as you are told; you are a boy that makes himself to trust; for me, I am a Skipper from the Bahamas, I do some things that are strange to you,—­among them, this.  I go into the parlour.”

He nodded lightly, and leaving the child open-mouthed in amazement, opened the sacred door, the door of the best parlour, and went in, as unconcernedly as if it were his own cabin.  John, standing at the door,—­he surely might go as far as the door, if he did not step over the threshold,—­watched him, and his eyes grew wider and wider, and his breath came quicker and quicker.

For the Skipper was doing strange things, as he had threatened.  Advancing quickly into the middle of the room, he cast around him the same searching glance with which he had scanned the kitchen.  He went to the window, and threw back the blinds.  The sunlight streamed in, as if it, too, were eager to see what shrouded treasures were kept secluded here.  Probably the blinds had not been thrown back since Gran’ther Scraper died.

The parlour was scarcely less grim than the kitchen, though there was a difference in its grimness.  Seven chairs stood against the wall, like seven policemen with their hands behind their backs; a table crouched in the middle, its legs bent as if to spring.  The boy John considered the table a monster, transformed by magic into its present shape, and likely to be released at any moment, and to leap at the unwary intruder.  Its faded cover, with two ancient ink-blots which