now shelf-hung and book-lined, and served as an approach to the study into which it opened.  The furniture was old and frayed as to upholstery, and the bric-a-brac on an old-fashioned what-not was faintly murmurous of some long-vanished feminine hand.  The scant lares and penates were sufficient to explain something of this shiplike trimness of the housekeeping.  The broken half of a ship’s wheel clung to the wall above the narrow grate, and the white marble mantel supported a sextant, a binocular, and other incidentals of a shipmaster’s profession.  An engraving of the battle of Trafalgar and a portrait of Farragut spoke further of the sea.  If we take a liberty and run our eyes over the bookshelves we find many volumes relating to the development of sea power and textbooks of an old vintage on the sailing of ships and like matters.  And if we were to pry into the drawers of an old walnut cabinet in the study we should find illuminative data touching the life of Andrew Kelton.  It is well for us to know that he was born in Indiana, as far as possible from salt water; and that, after being graduated from Annapolis, he served his country until retired for disabilities due to a wound received at Mobile Bay.  He thereafter became and continued for fifteen years the professor of mathematics and astronomy at Madison College, in his native state; and it is there that we find him, living peacefully with his granddaughter Sylvia in the shadow of the college.

Comfort had set its seal everywhere, but it was keyed to male ideals of ease and convenience; the thousand and one things in which women express themselves were absent.  The eye was everywhere struck by the strict order of the immaculate small rooms and the snugness with which every article had been fitted to its place.  The professor’s broad desk was free of litter; his tobacco jar neighbored his inkstand on a clean, fresh blotter.  It is a bit significant that Sylvia, in putting down her book to answer the bell, marked her place carefully with an envelope, for Sylvia, we may say at once, was a young person disciplined to careful habits.

“Is this Professor Kelton’s?  I should like very much to see him,” said the young man to whom she opened.

“I’m sorry, but he isn’t at home,” replied Sylvia, with that directness which, we shall find, characterized her speech.

The visitor was neither a member of the faculty nor a student, and as her grandfather was particularly wary of agents she was on guard against the stranger.

“It is important for me to see him.  If he will be back later I can come again.”