of the Wise Men of Gotham_.

Finally, hidden behind the outstanding frame of the bookcase, he
discovered four tiny volumes tied together with a rusty, black ribbon.
A heavy coating of dust lay upon them. A large spider, moreover, darted
from behind them. Dust clung unpleasantly to its hairy and ill-favoured
person. It was a matter of principle with Julius never to take life;
yet instinctively he drew back his hand from the book in disgust.

"_Araignee du matin, chagrin_," he said, involuntarily, while he
watched the insect make good its escape over the top of the bookcase.

Then he flicked uneasily at the little parcel with his duster, causing
a cloud of gray atoms to float up and out into the room. Julius was
perhaps absurdly open to impressions. It took him some seconds to
recover from his sense of repulsion and to untie the rusty ribbon
around the little books. They proved all to be ragged and imperfect
copies of the same work. The woodcuts in them were splotched with crude
colour. The title-page was printed in assorted type--here a line of
Roman capitals, there one in italics or old English letters. The
inscription, consequently, was difficult to decipher, causing him to
hold the tattered page very close to his short-sighted eyes. It ran
thus--

"Setting forth a true and particular account of the dealings of
Sir Thomas Calmady with the forester's daughter and the bloody
death of her only child. To which is added her prophecy and curse."

Julius had been standing, so as to reach the length of the shelf. Now
he sat down on the top step of the ladder again. A whole rush of
memories came upon him. He remembered vaguely how, long ago, in his
childhood, he had heard legends of this same curse. Staying here at
Brockhurst, as a baby-child with his mother, maids had hinted at it,
gossiping over the nursery fire at night; and his mind, irresistibly
attracted, even then, by the supernatural, had been filled at once by
desperate curiosity and by panic fear. He paused, thinking back,
singularly moved, as one on the edge of the satisfaction of
long-desired knowledge, yet slightly self-contemptuous, both of his own
emotion and of the rather vulgar means by which that knowledge promised
to be obtained.

The shafts of sunshine fell more obliquely across the eastern end of
the gallery. Benign Buddha had passed into shadow; while a painting by
Murillo, standing on an easel near by caught the light, starting into
ar