We want to get on, you know. Anything to
make a start. Five shillings? It's not the value of the metal, but I'll
take the bid. Six. Look at it well. It's not an article you come across
every day of your lives."

The bottle was still being passed round with disrespectful raps and
slaps, and it had now come to Ventimore's right-hand neighbour, who
scrutinised it carefully, but made no bid.

"That's all _right_, you know," he whispered in Horace's ear. "That's
good stuff, that is. If I was you, I'd _'ave_ that."

"Seven shillings--eight--nine bid for it over there in the corner," said
the auctioneer.

"If you think it's so good, why don't you have it yourself?" Horace
asked his neighbour.

"Me? Oh, well, it ain't exactly in my line, and getting this last lot
pretty near cleaned me out. I've done for to-day, I 'ave. All the same,
it is a curiosity; dunno as I've seen a brass vawse just that shape
before, and it's genuine old, though all these fellers are too ignorant
to know the value of it. So I don't mind giving you the tip."

Horace rose, the better to examine the top. As far as he could make out
in the flickering light of one of the gas-stars, which the auctioneer
had just ordered to be lit, there were half-erased scratches and
triangular marks on the cap that might possibly be an inscription. If
so, might there not be the means here of regaining the Professor's
favour, which he felt that, as it was, he should probably forfeit,
justly or not, by his ill-success?

He could hardly spend the Professor's money on it, since it was not in
the catalogue, and he had no authority to bid for it, but he had a few
shillings of his own to spare. Why not bid for it on his own account as
long as he could afford to do so? If he were outbid, as usual, it would
not particularly matter.

"Thirteen shillings," the auctioneer was saying, in his dispassionate
tones. Horace caught his eye, and slightly raised his catalogue, while
another man nodded at the same time. "Fourteen in two places." Horace
raised his catalogue again. "I won't go beyond fifteen," he thought.

"Fifteen. It's _against_ you, sir. Any advance on fifteen? Sixteen--this
very quaint old Oriental bottle going for only sixteen shillings.

"After all," thought Horace, "I don't mind anything under a pound for
it." And he bid seventeen shillings. "Eighteen," cried his rival, a
short, cheery, cherub-faced little dealer, whose neighbours adjured him
to "sit quiet like