"Your honoured grandfather treated me--I may say it without presumption--as a friend, having known me from childhood as his father's librarian." It did not strike me at the time how old the man must be.
"May I ask where you live now, Mr.Crow ?" I said.
He smiled an amused smile.
"You nearly hit my name," he rejoined, "which shows the family insight.
You have seen me before, but only once, and could not then have heard it!" "Where was that ?" "In this very room.

You were quite a child, however!" I could not be sure that I remembered him, but for a moment I fancied I did, and I begged him to set me right as to his name.
"There is such a thing as remembering without recognising the memory in it," he remarked.

"For my name--which you have near enough--it used to be Raven." I had heard the name, for marvellous tales had brought it me.
"It is very kind of you to come and see me," I said.

"Will you not sit down ?" He seated himself at once.
"You knew my father, then, I presume ?" "I knew him," he answered with a curious smile, "but he did not care about my acquaintance, and we never met .-- That gentleman, however," he added, pointing to the portrait,--"old Sir Up'ard, his people called him,--was in his day a friend of mine yet more intimate than ever your grandfather became." Then at length I began to think the interview a strange one.

But in truth it was hardly stranger that my visitor should remember Sir Upward, than that he should have been my great-grandfather's librarian! "I owe him much," he continued; "for, although I had read many more books than he, yet, through the special direction of his studies, he was able to inform me of a certain relation of modes which I should never have discovered of myself, and could hardly have learned from any one else." "Would you mind telling me all about that ?" I said.
"By no means--as much at least as I am able: there are not such things as wilful secrets," he answered--and went on.
"That closet held his library--a hundred manuscripts or so, for printing was not then invented.