EARLY in the present century it was generally reported among theneighbors of one Reuben Limbrick that he was in a fair way tomake a comfortable little fortune by dealing in Salt.

His place of abode was in Staffordshire, on a morsel of freeholdland of his own--appropriately called Salt Patch. Without beingabsolutely a miser, he lived in the humblest manner, saw verylittle company; skillfully invested his money; and persisted inremaining a single man.

Toward eighteen hundred and forty he first felt the approach ofthe chronic malady which ultimately terminated his life. Aftertrying what the medical men of his own locality could do for him,with very poor success, he met by accident with a doctor livingin the western suburbs of London, who thoroughly understood hiscomplaint. After some journeying backward and forward to consultthis gentleman, he decided on retiring from business, and ontaking up his abode within an easy distance of his medical man.

Finding a piece of freehold land to be sold in the neighborhoodof Fulham, he bought it, and had a cottage residence built on it,under his own directions. He surrounded the whole--being a mansingularly jealous of any intrusion on his retirement, or of anychance observation of his ways and habits--with a high wall,which cost a large sum of money, and which was rightly considereda dismal and hideous object by the neighbors. When the newresidence was completed, he called it after the name of the placein Staffordshire where he had made his money, and where he hadlived during the happiest period of his life. His relatives,failing to understand that a question of sentiment was involvedin this proceeding, appealed to hard facts, and reminded him thatthere were no salt mines in the neighborhood. Reuben Limbrickanswered, "So much the worse for the neighborhood"--and persistedin calling his property, "Salt Patch."

The cottage was so small that it looked quite lost in the largegarden all round it. There was a ground-floor and a floor aboveit--and that was all.

On either side of the passage, on the lower floor, were tworooms. At the right-hand side, on entering by the front-door,there was a kitchen, with its outhouses attached. The room nextto the kitchen looked into the garden. In Reuben Limbrick's timeit was called the study and contained a small collection of booksand a large store of fishing-tackle. On the left-hand side of thepassage there was a drawing-room situated at the back of thehouse, and communicating with a dining-room in the front. On theupper floor there were five bedrooms--two on one side of thepassage, corresponding in size with the dining-room and thedrawing-room below, but not opening into each other; three on theother side of the passage, consisting of one larger room infront, and of two small rooms at the back. All these were solidlyand completely furnished. Money had not been spared, andworkmanship had not been stinted. It was all substantial--and, upstairs and down stairs, it was all ugly.

The situation of Salt Patch was lonely. The lands of themarket-gardeners separated it from other houses. Jealouslysurrounded by its own high walls, the cottage suggested, even tothe most unimaginative persons, the idea of an asylum or aprison. Reuben Limbrick's relatives, occasionally coming to staywith him, found the place prey on their spirits, and rejoicedwhen the time came for going home again. They were never pressedto stay against their will. Reuben Limbrick was not a hospitableor a sociable man. He set very little value on human sympathy, inhis attacks of illness; and he bore congratulations impatiently,in his intervals of health. "I care about nothing but fishing,"he used to say. "I find my dog very good company. And I am quitehappy as long as I am free from pain."

On his death-bed, he divided his money justly enough among hisrelations. The only part of his Will which exposed itself tounfavorable criticism, was a clause conferring a legacy on one ofhis sisters (then a widow) who had estranged herself from herfamily by marrying beneath her. The family agreed in consideringthis unhappy person as undeserving of notice or benefit. Her namewas Hester Dethridge. It proved to be a great aggravation ofHester's offenses, in the eyes of Hester's relatives, when it wasdiscovered that she possessed a life-interest in Salt Patch, andan income of two hundred a year.

Not visited by the surviving members of her family, living,literally, by herself in the world, Hester decided, in spite ofher comfortable little income, on letting lodgings. Theexplanation of this strange conduct which she had written on herslate, in reply to an inquiry from Anne, was the true one. "Ihave not got a friend in the world: I dare not live alone." Inthat desolate situation, and with that melancholy motive, she putthe house into an agent's hands. The first person in want oflodgings whom the agent sent to see the place was Perry thetrainer; and Hester's first tenant was Geoffrey Delamayn.

The rooms which the landlady reserved for herself were thekitchen, the room next to it, which had once been her brother's"study," and the two small back bedrooms up stairs--one forherself, the other for the servant-girl whom she employed to helpher. The whole of the rest of the cottage was to let. It was morethan the trainer wanted; but Hester Dethridge refused to disposeof her lodgings--either as to the rooms occupied, or as to theperiod for which they were to be taken--on other than her ownterms. Perry had no alternative but to lose the advantage of thegarden as a private training-ground, or to submit.

Being only two in number, the lodgers had three bedrooms tochoose from. Geoffrey established himself in the back-room, overthe drawing-room. Perry chose the front-room, placed on the otherside of the cottage, next to the two smaller apartments occupiedby Hester and her maid. Under this arrangement, the frontbedroom, on the opposite side of the passage--next to the room inwhich Geoffrey slept--was left empty, and was called, for thetime being, the spare room. As for the lower floor, the athleteand his trainer ate their meals in the dining-room; and left thedrawing-room, as a needless luxury, to take care of itself.

The Foot-Race once over, Perry's business at the cottage was atan end. His empty bedroom became a second spare room. The termfor which the lodgings had been taken was then still unexpired.On the day after the race Geoffrey had to choose betweensacrificing the money, or remaining in the lodgings by himself,with two spare bedrooms on his hands, and with a drawing-room forthe reception of his visitors--who called with pipes in theirmouths, and whose idea of hospitality was a pot of beer in thegarden.

To use his own phrase, he was "out of sorts." A sluggishreluctance to face change of any kind possessed him. He decidedon staying at Salt Patch until his marriage to Mrs. Glenarm(which he then looked upon as a certainty) obliged him to alterhis habits completely, once for all. From Fulham he had gone, thenext day, to attend the inquiry in Portland Place. And to Fulhamhe returned, when he brought the wife who had been forced uponhim to her "home."

Such was the position of the tenant, and such were thearrangements of the interior of the cottage, on the memorableevening when Anne Silvester entered it as Geoffrey's wife.