Seeing I was interested in looking about his shop, my new friend—­for I could not help feeling that we should be friends before all was over, and so began to count him one already—­resumed the conversation.  He had never taken up the dropped thread of it before.

“Yes, sir,” he said; “the owners of the place little thought it would come to this—­the deals growing into a coffin there on the spot where the grand dinner was laid for them and their guests!  But there is another thing about it that is odder still; my son is the last male”—­

Here he stopped suddenly, and his face grew very red.  As suddenly he resumed—­

“I’m not a gentleman, sir; but I will tell the truth.  Curse it!—­I beg your pardon, sir,”—­and here the old smile—­“I don’t think I got that from their side of the house.—­My son’s not the last male descendant.”

Here followed another pause.

As to the imprecation, I knew better than to take any notice of a mere expression of excitement under a sense of some injury with which I was not yet acquainted.  If I could get his feelings right in regard to other and more important things, a reform in that matter would soon follow; whereas to make a mountain of a molehill would be to put that very mountain between him and me.  Nor would I ask him any questions, lest I should just happen to ask him the wrong one; for this parishioner of mine evidently wanted careful handling, if I would do him any good.  And it will not do any man good to fling even the Bible in his face.  Nay, a roll of bank-notes, which would be more evidently a good to most men, would carry insult with it if presented in that manner.  You cannot expect people to accept before they have had a chance of seeing what the offered gift really is.

After a pause, therefore, the carpenter had once more to recommence, or let the conversation lie.  I stood in a waiting attitude.  And while I looked at him, I was reminded of some one else whom I knew—­with whom, too, I had pleasant associations—­though I could not in the least determine who that one might be.

“It’s very foolish of me to talk so to a stranger,” he resumed.

“It is very kind and friendly of you,” I said, still careful to make no advances.  “And you yourself belong to the old family that once lived in this old house?”

“It would be no boast to tell the truth, sir, even if it were a credit to me, which it is not.  That family has been nothing but a curse to ours.”

I noted that he spoke of that family as different from his, and yet implied that he belonged to it.  The explanation would come in time.  But the man was again silent, planing away at half the lid of his sister’s coffin.  And I could not help thinking that the closed mouth meant to utter nothing more on this occasion.

“I am sure there must be many a story to tell about this old place, if only there were any one to tell them,” I said at last, looking round the room once more.—­“I think I see the remains of paintings on the ceiling.”