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I say “ALL,” for there is a second visitor close behind me, and the sound of still another footstep can already be heard in the hall below.

It is the back of Peter’s head now that interests me, and the droop of his shoulders. They always remind me of Leech’s sketch of Old Scrooge waiting for Marly’s ghost, whenever I come upon him thus unobserved. To-night he not only wears his calico dressing-gown–unheard-of garment in these days–but a red velvet cap pulled over his scalp. Most bald men would have the cap black–but then most bald men have not Peter’s eye for color.

It’s a queer head–this head of Peter Griggs. Not at all like any other head I know. If I should attempt to describe it, I should merely have to say bluntly that it was more like an enlarged hickory-nut than any other object I can think of. It is of the same texture, too, and almost as devoid of hair. Except on his temples, and close down where his collar binds his thin neck, there is really very little hair left; and this is so near the color of the shrivelled skin beneath that I never know where one begins and the other ends.

When I face him–and by this time I am facing him–I must admit that the hickory-nut simile still holds. There are no particular features, no decided bumps, no decided hollows; the nose is only an enlarged ridge, the cheeks and eye-sockets only seams. But the eyes count–yes, the eyes count–count so that you see at once that they are the live points of the live coal smouldering beneath.

Here the hickory-nut as a simile goes all to pieces. These eyes are the flash from some distant lighthouse, burning dull when the commonplace of life passes before him, and bursting into effulgence when something touches his heart or stirs his imagination. Downtown in the Dismal Tomb even the lighthouse goes to smash. Here the eyes set so far back in his head that they look for all the world like two wary foxes peeping out of a hole, losing nothing of what is going on outside–never being fooled, never being wheedled or coaxed out of their retreat. “Can’t fool Mr. Griggs,” some broker says, as he tries to get his papers signed out of his turn. Uptown these same foxes are running around loose in an abandonment of jollity, frisking here and there, all restraint cast aside–trusting everybody–and glad to. That’s why I couldn’t understand his tone of voice when I opened his door.

“Not sick, old fellow?” I cried. He had not yet lifted his head or vouchsafed a single word of welcome.

“Yes, sick at heart. My old carcass is all right, but inside–way down where a man lives–I’m sick unto death. Take a look at the mantelpiece. You see my best miniature’s gone, don’t you?”

“Not the Cosway?”

“Yes, the Cosway!”

“Stolen?”

“Worse than stolen! Oh, my boy, such mean people live in the world! I couldn’t believe it possible. I’ve read in the papers something like it, but that I should have been–oh, I can’t get over it! It haunts me like a ghost. It isn’t the value–it’s the way it was done; and I was so helpless, and I meant only to be kind.”

The other men had arrived now and the three of us were ranged around Peter in a circle, wondering with wide-opened eyes at his tone of voice, his dismal expression, and especially at the air of dejection which seemed to ooze through every square inch of his calico dressing-gown.

“Sit down, all of you,” he continued “and listen. And it’s all your fault. If only one of you had come up to see me! I waited and waited; I knew most of you would be off somewhere eating your Thanksgiving turkey, but that every mother’s son of you should have forgotten me–that’s what I won’t forgive you for.”