d ask a question. He had
found on examining the wrapper of the volume that it was posted in his
own town.

'No copy of the book has been sold by me,' the bookseller's voice replied
from far up the Alpine height of the shop-ladder, where he stood dusting
stale volumes, as was his habit of a morning before customers came. 'I
have never heard of it--probably never shall;' and he shook out the
duster, so as to hit the delicate mean between stifling Christopher and
not stifling him.

'Surely you don't live by your shop?' said Christopher, drawing back.

The bookseller's eyes rested on the speaker's; his face changed; he came
down and placed his hand on the lapel of Christopher's coat. 'Sir,' he
said, 'country bookselling is a miserable, impoverishing, exasperating
thing in these days. Can you understand the rest?'

'I can; I forgive a starving man anything,' said Christopher.

'You go a long way very suddenly,' said the book seller. 'Half as much
pity would have seemed better. However, wait a moment.' He looked into
a list of new books, and added: 'The work you allude to was only
published last week; though, mind you, if it had been published last
century I might not have sold a copy.'

Although his time was precious, Christopher had now become so interested
in the circumstance that the unseen sender was somebody breathing his own
atmosphere, possibly the very writer herself--the book being too new to
be known--that he again passed through the blue shadow of the spire which
stretched across the street to-day, and went towards the post-office,
animated by a bright intention--to ask the postmaster if he knew the
handwriting in which the packet was addressed.

Now the postmaster was an acquaintance of Christopher's, but, as regarded
putting that question to him, there was a difficulty. Everything turned
upon whether the postmaster at the moment of asking would be in his under-
government manner, or in the manner with which mere nature had endowed
him. In the latter case his reply would be all that could be wished; in
the former, a man who had sunk in society might as well put his tongue
into a mousetrap as make an inquiry so obviously outside the pale of
legality as was this.

So he postponed his business for the present, and refrained from entering
till he passed by after dinner, when pleasant malt liquor, of that
capacity for cheering which is expressed by four large letter X's
marching in a row, had refille