From various parts of the house came sounds--of voices and of footsteps,
more than once of distant laughter. Far above somewhere a child's high
call rang out. Nearer at hand some one touched the keys of a piano,
playing snatches of Schumann--_Der Nussbaum, Mondnacht, Die Lotosblume_.
Richard recognized the airs which thus reached his ears, and was sorry
when they ceased.

Now there might be nothing in all this worth describing if the effect
upon the observer had not been one to him so unaccustomed. Though he had
lived to the age of twenty-eight years, he had never set foot in a place
which seemed so curiously like a vague dream he had somewhere at the
back of his head. For the last two years he had lived with his
grandfather in the great pile of stone which they called home. If this
were no real home, the young man had never had one. He had spent periods
of his life in various sorts of dwelling-places; in private rooms at
schools and college--always the finest of their kind--in clubs, on
ships, in railway trains; but no time at all in any place remotely
resembling the house in which he now waited, a stranger in every sense
of the word, more strange to the everyday, fine type of home known to
the American of good birth and breeding than may seem credible as it is
set down.

"Hold on there!" suddenly shouted a determined male voice from somewhere
above Richard. A door banged, there was a rush of light-running feet
along the upper hall, closely followed by the tread of heavier ones. A
burst of the gayest laughter was succeeded by certain deep grunts,
punctuated by little noises as of panting breath and half-stifled
merriment. It was easy to determine that a playful scuffle of some sort
was going on overhead, which seemed to end only after considerable
inarticulate but easily translatable protest on the part of the weaker