The matron was surprised.

‘What makes you say that, sir?’

’What would a workman do with such a name as John Harbel Knowles, or with a diamond ring for that matter?  And who would dare to disfigure a window so, if he were not of the family?  And why should he be so proud of his work, unless work was a new and wondrous thing to him.  To paint part of the windows also sounds like the amateur and not the workman.  So I repeat that it was the first achievement of the son of the house.’

’Well, indeed, I dare say you are right, though I never thought of it before,’ said the matron.  ’Now this, up here, is Carlyle’s own room, in which he slept for forty-seven years.  In the case is a cast of his head taken after death.’

It was strange and rather ghastly to see a plaster head in this room where the head of flesh had so often lain.  Maude and Frank stood beside it, and gazed long and silently while the matron, half-bored and half-sympathetic, waited for them to move on.  It was an aquiline face, very different from any picture which they had seen, sunken cheeks, an old man’s toothless mouth, a hawk nose, a hollow eye—­the gaunt timbers of what had once been a goodly house.  There was repose, and something of surprise also, in the features—­also a very subtle serenity and dignity.

’The distance from the ear to the forehead is said to be only equalled by Napoleon and by Gladstone.  That’s what they say,’ said the matron, with Scotch caution.

‘It’s the face of a noble man when all is said and done,’ said Frank.  ’I believe that the true Thomas Carlyle without the dyspepsia, and the true Jane Welsh without the nerves, are knowing and loving each other in some further life.’

‘It is sweet to think so,’ cried Maude.  ’Oh, I do hope that it is so!  How dear death would be if we could only be certain of that!’

The matron smiled complacently in the superior wisdom of the Shorter Catechism.  ‘There is neither marriage nor giving in marriage,’ said she, shaking her head.  ’This is the spare bedroom, sir, where Mr. Emerson slept when he was here.  And now if you will step this way I will show you the study.’

It was the singular room which Carlyle had constructed in the hopes that he could shut out all the noises of the universe, the crowing of cocks, and the jingling of a young lady’s five-finger exercise in particular.  It had cost him a hundred odd pounds, and had ended in being unendurably hot in summer, impossibly cold in winter, and so constructed acoustically that it reverberated every sound in the neighbourhood.  For once even his wild and whirling words could hardly match the occasion—­not all his kraft sprachen would be too much.  For the rest it was at least a roomy and lofty apartment, with space for many books, and for an irritable man to wander to and fro.  Prints there were of many historical notables, and slips of letters and of memoranda in a long glass case.