“The late Archibald Ogilvie was the nearest approach to a good man ever born at Glengyle.  But his bitter virtue took the turn of the misanthrope; he moped over the dishonesty of his ancestors, from which, somehow, he generalised a dishonesty of all men.  More especially he distrusted philanthropy or free-giving; and he swore if he could find one man who took his exact rights he should have all the gold of Glengyle.  Having delivered this defiance to humanity he shut himself up, without the smallest expectation of its being answered.  One day, however, a deaf and seemingly senseless lad from a distant village brought him a belated telegram; and Glengyle, in his acrid pleasantry, gave him a new farthing.  At least he thought he had done so, but when he turned over his change he found the new farthing still there and a sovereign gone.  The accident offered him vistas of sneering speculation.  Either way, the boy would show the greasy greed of the species.  Either he would vanish, a thief stealing a coin; or he would sneak back with it virtuously, a snob seeking a reward.  In the middle of that night Lord Glengyle was knocked up out of his bed—­for he lived alone—­and forced to open the door to the deaf idiot.  The idiot brought with him, not the sovereign, but exactly nineteen shillings and eleven-pence three-farthings in change.

“Then the wild exactitude of this action took hold of the mad lord’s brain like fire.  He swore he was Diogenes, that had long sought an honest man, and at last had found one.  He made a new will, which I have seen.  He took the literal youth into his huge, neglected house, and trained him up as his solitary servant and —­after an odd manner—­his heir.  And whatever that queer creature understands, he understood absolutely his lord’s two fixed ideas:  first, that the letter of right is everything; and second, that he himself was to have the gold of Glengyle.  So far, that is all; and that is simple.  He has stripped the house of gold, and taken not a grain that was not gold; not so much as a grain of snuff.  He lifted the gold leaf off an old illumination, fully satisfied that he left the rest unspoilt.  All that I understood; but I could not understand this skull business.  I was really uneasy about that human head buried among the potatoes.  It distressed me—­till Flambeau said the word.

“It will be all right.  He will put the skull back in the grave, when he has taken the gold out of the tooth.”

And, indeed, when Flambeau crossed the hill that morning, he saw that strange being, the just miser, digging at the desecrated grave, the plaid round his throat thrashing out in the mountain wind; the sober top hat on his head.

The Wrong Shape