“He was simply ‘poor ould Denny!”’ he said. “That was his profession. It was pretty comprehensive, I can tell you. He was here when the house would be overcrowded with ten guests. He roofed a whole wing with his own hands. Then he dug the pit for the gasometer, thirty years ago, and he lived to dam the trout stream that works the dynamo for the electric light. He was also an accomplished masseur, and set up the hatchery that supplied the stream with trout.”
“His name should have been Crichton, not Callan. Anything else?”
“He could do tricks on the billiard table, and he knew all that there is to be known about hair-cutting.”
“Is that all?”
“That’s all—no, stay! he was a sculptor’s model for some time. I can show you the result of his labours in this direction, if you would care to see it.”
“I certainly should care to see it.”
“Come along, then.”
He led me half-way round the building, from where the two storeys of the centre block dwindled away to the single bedroom sheds of one wing. We passed by the side of the terrace garden, and I made a remark respecting the fine carving on some of the stone vases.
“They were the work of the sculptor who chose Denny for his model,” said the doctor. “Here we are.”
I followed him between two fine cedars, and in another instant we were face to face with a very striking colossal figure of a man holding aloft a goblet. The head and the torso were very powerful, but the latter was joined on to a conventional Greek pedestal, at the foot of which there peeped out four tiny hoofs of satyrs.