he diligent ones discussed ways and means.
Parties were formed, almost one might say expeditions, to rescue the
valuable work from oblivion. Michael stood contemptuously aside from the
buzz of self-conscious effort round him, although he had made up his own
mind to be one of the first to obtain the book. Levy, however, secured
the first copy for fourpence in Farringdon Street, earning for his
sharpness much praise. Another boy bought one for three shillings and
sixpence in Paddington, the price one would expect to pay, if not a
Levy; and there were rumours of a copy in Kensington High Street. To
Michael the mart of London from earliest youth had been Hammersmith
Broadway, and thither he hurried, hopeful of discovering Buttmann's
dingy Lexilogus, for the purchase of which he had thoughtfully begged a
sovereign from his mother. Michael did not greatly covet Buttmann, but
he was sure that the surplus from three shillings and sixpence, possibly
even from fourpence, would be very welcome.

He found at last in a turning off Hammersmith Broadway a wonderful
bookshop, whose rooms upon rooms leading into one another were all lined
and loaded with every kind of book. The proprietor soon found a copy of
Buttmann, which he sold to Michael for half a crown, leaving him with
fifteen shillings for himself, since he decided that it would be as well
to return his mother at least half a crown from her sovereign. The
purchase completed, Michael began to wander round the shop, taking down
a book here, a book there, dipping into them from the top of a ladder,
sniffing them, clapping their covers together to drive away the dust,
and altogether thoroughly enjoying himself, while the daylight slowly
faded and street-lamps came winking into ken outside. At last, just as
the shop-boy was putting up the shutters, Michael discovered a volume
bound in half-morocco of a crude gay blue, that proved on inspection to
contain the complete poetical works of Algernon Charles Swinburne, for
the sum of seventeen shillings and sixpence.

What was now left of his golden sovereign that should have bought so
much beside Buttmann's brown and musty Lexilogus?

Michael approached the proprietor with the volume in his hand.

"How much?" he asked, with a queer choking sensation, a throbbing
excitement, for he had never before even imagined the expenditure of
seventeen shillings and sixpence on one book.

"What's this?" said the proprietor, putting on his spectac