That unearthly silence peculiar to houses after midnight reigned in Mr.Sheldon's domicile, and he could hear the voices of distant roisterers, and the miauling of neighbouring cats, with a painful distinctness as he sat brooding in his silent room.

The fact that a mahogany chiffonier in a corner gave utterance to a faint groan occasionally, as of some feeble creature in pain, afforded him no annoyance.

He was superior to superstitious fancies, and all the rappings and scratchings of spirit-land would have failed to disturb his equanimity.

He was a strictly practical man--one of those men who are always ready, with a stump of lead-pencil and the back of a letter, to reduce everything in creation to figures.
"I had better read up that business before they come," he said, when he had to all appearance "thought out" the subject of his reverie.

"No time so good as this for doing it quietly.