ng at? Remember, you have
never told me a word of it.'

And Elsmere's smile had in it a touch of most friendly reproach. Fatigue
had left the scholar relaxed, comparatively defenseless. His sunk
and wrinkled eyes lit up with a smile, faint indeed, but of unwonted
softness.

'A task indeed,' he said with a sigh, 'the task of a life-time. To-day
I finished the second third of it. Probably before the last section is
begun some interloping German will have stepped down before me; it is
the way of the race! But for the moment there is the satisfaction of
having come to an end of some sort--a natural halt, at any rate.'

Elsmere's eyes were still interrogative. 'Oh, well,' said the Squire,
hastily, 'it is a book I planned just after I took my Doctor's degree at
Berlin. It struck me then as the great want of modern scholarship. It
is a History of Evidence, or rather, more strictly, "A History of
_Testimony_."'

Robert started. The library flashed into his mind, and Langham's figure
in the long gray coat sitting on the stool.

'A great subject,' he said slowly, 'a magnificent subject. How have you
conceived it I wonder?'

'Simply from the standpoint of evolution, of development. The
philosophical value of the subject is enormous. You must have considered
it, of course; every historian must. But few people have any idea in
detail of the amount of light which the history of human witness in
the world, systematically carried through, throws on the history of the
human mind; that is to say, on the history of ideas.'

The Squire paused, his keen scrutinizing look dwelling on the face
beside him, as though to judge whether he were understood.

'Oh, true!' cried Elsmere; 'most true. Now I know what vague want it is
that has been haunting me for months----'

He stopped short, his look, aglow with all the young thinker's ardor
fixed on the Squire.

The Squire received the outburst in silence--a somewhat ambiguous
silence.

'But go on,' said Elsmere; 'please go on.'

'Well, you remember,' said the Squire slowly, 'that when Tractarianism
began I was for a time one of Newman's victims. Then, when Newman
departed, I went over body and bones to the Liberal reaction which
followed his going. In the first ardor of what seemed to me a release
from slavery I migrated to Berlin, in search of knowledge which there
was no getting in England, and there, with the taste of a dozen aimless
theological controversies still in my mouth, th