Very glad to see you.

Here, Maggie, what d'you mean by keeping the gentleman standing in that outer darkness ?" The room into which Dickson was ushered was small and bright, with a red paper on the walls, a fire burning, and a big oil lamp in the centre of a table.

Clearly Mr.Loudon had no wife, for it was a bachelor's den in every line of it.

A cloth was laid on a corner of the table, in which stood the remnants of a meal.

Mr.Loudon seemed to have been about to make a brew of punch, for a kettle simmered by the fire, and lemons and sugar flanked a pot-bellied whisky decanter of the type that used to be known as a "mason's mell." The sight of the lawyer was a surprise to Dickson and dissipated his notions of an aged and lethargic incompetent.