Henry could never be quite sure whether he was to be classed
as a "character," or as a genuine personality. One thing was certain,
that, sometime or other, or many times, in his life he had done
something, or many things, which had won for him a respect as deep as
his solemnity of aspect; and certainly, if gravity of demeanour goes for
anything, all the owls of all the ages in collaboration could not have
produced an expression of time-honoured wisdom so convincing. Sometimes
his old lantern-jaws would emit an uncanny cackle of a laugh, and a
ghastly flicker of humour play across his parchment features; but these
only deepened the general sense of solemnity, as the hoot of a
night-bird deepens the loneliness of some desolate hollow among
the hills.
It was this strange old ghost of a man that was to be the next to turn
human, and it came about like this. Right away at the top of the
building was a lonely room where the sun never shone, in which were
stored away the old account-books, diaries, and various
dead-and-done-with documents of the firm; and here too was deposited,
from time to time, various wreckage of the same kind from other
businesses whose last offices had been done by the firm, and whose
records were still preserved, in the unlikely event of any chance
resurrection of claim upon, or interest in, their long forgotten names.
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