It was Mr. Hood’s habit to spend his evenings in a little room at the top of the house, which he called his laboratory.  It was furnished with a deal table, a couple of chairs, and some shelves.  On the table was his apparatus for the study of electricity, mostly the product of his own ingenuity; also a number of retorts, crucibles, test-tubes, and the like, wherewith he experimented chemically.  The shelves exhibited bottles and jars, and the dozen or so volumes which made his scientific library.  These tastes he had kept up from boyhood; there was something pathetic in the persistency with which he clung to the pretence of serious study, though the physical fatigue which possessed him during his few hours of freedom would in any case have condemned him to mere trifling.  Often he came upstairs, lit his lamp, and sat for a couple of hours doing nothing more than play with his instruments, much as a child might; at other times a sudden revival of zeal would declare itself, and he would read and experiment till late in the night, always in fear of the inevitable lecture on his reckless waste of lamp-oil.  In the winter time the temperature of this garret was arctic, and fireplace there was none; still he could not intermit his custom of spending at least an hour in what he called scientific study, with the result that he went to bed numbed and shivering.  It was but another illustration of possibilities rendered futile by circumstances.  It was more than likely that the man might, with fair treatment, have really done something in one or other branch of physics.  To Emily, who strove to interest herself in his subjects out of mere love and compassion, he appeared to have gained not a little knowledge of facts and theories.  She liked to encourage herself in the faith that his attainments were solid as far as they went, and that they might have been the foundation of good independent work; it helped her to respect her father.

‘Will you come up to-night, Emily?’ he asked, with the diffidence which he always put into this request.

She assented with apparent cheerfulness, and they climbed the stairs together.  The last portion of them was uncarpeted, and their footsteps sounded with hollow echoes under the roof.  It was all but dark by this time; Mr. Hood found matches on the table and lit the lamp, which illuminated the bare whitewashed walls and sloping ceiling with a dreary dimness.  There was no carpet on the floor, which creaked as they moved here and there.  When her father was on the point of drawing down the blind, Emily interposed.

‘Do you mind leaving it up, father?’

‘Of course I will,’ he assented with a smile.  ‘But why?’

‘The last daylight in the sky is pleasant to look at.’

On the landing below stood an old eight-day clock.  So much service had it seen that its voice was grown faint, and the strokes of each hour that it gave forth were wheezed with intervals of several seconds.  It was now striking nine, and the succession of long-drawn ghostly notes seemed interminable.