The Carlisle independent., 1915-03-25
CHAPTER II.

James Brood's home was remark able one. That portion of the house which rightly may be described as public" in order to distinguish it from other parts where privacy was enforced, was not unlike any of the richly furnished, old fashioned places in the lower part of the city, where there are still traces left of the Knick- erbockers and their times. This was not the home of men who had been merely rich; it was not wealth alone that stood behind these stately invest ments.
 At the top of the house were the rooms which no one entered except by the gracious will of the master. Here James Brood had stored the quaint. priceless treasures of his own peculiar fancy-exquisite, curious things from the mystic East, things that are not to be bought and sold but come only to the hand of him who searches in lands where peril is the price.
 Worlds separated the upper and IOhOl iCSiOuo Ol thdL uilC Olu LOuoOy a single step took one from the sedate Occident into the very heart of the Orient; a narrow threshold was the line between the rugged West and the soft, languorous, seductive East. In this part of the house, James Brood, when at home for one of his brief stays, spent many of his hours in se- clusion, shut off from the rest of the establishment as completely as if he were the inhabitant of another world. Attended by his Hindu servant, a silent man named Ranjab, and on oc- casions by his secretary, he saw but little of the remaining members of his rather extensive household. For several years he had been engaged in the task of writing his memoirs-so called-in so far as they related to his experiences and researches of the past twenty years.
 His secretary and amanuensis was Lydia Desmond, the nineteen-year-old daughter of his one-time companion and friend, the late John Desmond, whose death occurred when the girl was barely ten years of age.
 Brood, on hearing of the mans death, immediately made inquiries con cerning the condition in which he had left his wife and child, with the result that Mrs Desmond was installed as housekeeper in the New York house and the daughter given every advan- tage in the way of education. Des- mond had left nothing in the shape of riches except undiminished love for his wife and a diary kept during those perilous days before he met and mar ried her. This diary was being incor- porated in the history of James Brood's adventures, by consent of the in words he could not with modesty utter for himself. In these pages John Desmond was to tell his own story, in his own way, for Brood's love for his friend was broad enough even to ad- init of that He was to share his life two old men as he had shared it with them in reality.
 Lydias room, adjoining her moth CTS, was on the third floor at the foot of the small stairway leading up to the prescribed retreat at the top of the house. There was small sitting room off the two bed chambers, given over entirely to Mrs. Desmond and her daughter In this little room, Frederic Brood spent many quiet, happy hour The Desmonds, mother and daughter, understood and pitied the lonely boy who came to the big house soon after they were themselves installed. His heart. which had many sores, expand ed and glowed in the warmth of their kindness and affection; the plague of tion gave way before this unexpected kindness, not immediately, it is true. but completely in the end.
 By nature he was slow to respond to the advances of others; his life had been such that avarice accounted for all that he received from others in the shape of respect and consideration. He was prone to discount a friendly attitude for the simple reason that in his experience all friendships were marred by the fact that their sincerity rested entirely upon the generosity of the man who paid for them-his fa- ther No one had loved him for him. self; no one had given him an unseIf- ish thought in all the years of his boyhood
 At first he held himself aloof from the Desmonds; he was slow to sur render. He suspected them of the same motives that had been the basis of all previous attachments. When at last he realized that they were not like the others, his cup of joy, long an empty vessel, was filled to the brim and his happiness was without bounds. They were amazed by the transforms tion. The rather sullen, unapproach- able lad became at once so friendly. so dependent, that had they not been acquainted with the causes behind the old state of reticence, his very joy might have made nuisance of him. He followed Mrs. Desmond about in very much the same spirit that in