ate destiny
there had been some curiosity. The prices realised were disappointing to
the executors, but, then, these things are so much a matter of chance. An
unscrupulous writer in a well-known weekly paper had written the
collection down. Moreover there had been one or two large sales a short
time before Dr Skinner's, so that at this last there was rather a panic,
and a reaction against the high prices that had ruled lately.

The table of the library was loaded with books many deep; MSS. of all
kinds were confusedly mixed up with them,--boys' exercises, probably, and
examination papers--but all littering untidily about. The room in fact
was as depressing from its slatternliness as from its atmosphere of
erudition. Theobald and Ernest as they entered it, stumbled over a large
hole in the Turkey carpet, and the dust that rose showed how long it was
since it had been taken up and beaten. This, I should say, was no fault
of Mrs Skinner's but was due to the Doctor himself, who declared that if
his papers were once disturbed it would be the death of him. Near the
window was a green cage containing a pair of turtle doves, whose
plaintive cooing added to the melancholy of the place. The walls were
covered with book shelves from floor to ceiling, and on every shelf the
books stood in double rows. It was horrible. Prominent among the most
prominent upon the most prominent shelf were a series of splendidly bound
volumes entitled "Skinner's Works."

Boys are sadly apt to rush to conclusions, and Ernest believed that Dr
Skinner knew all the books in this terrible library, and that he, if he
were to be any good, should have to learn them too. His heart fainted
within him.

He was told to sit on a chair against the wall and did so, while Dr
Skinner talked to Theobald upon the topics of the day. He talked about
the Hampden Controversy then raging, and discoursed learnedly about
"Praemunire"; then he talked about the revolution which had just broken
out in Sicily, and rejoiced that the Pope had refused to allow foreign
troops to pass through his dominions in order to crush it. Dr Skinner
and the other masters took in the Times among them, and Dr Skinner echoed
the _Times_' leaders. In those days there were no penny papers and
Theobald only took in the _Spectator_--for he was at that time on the
Whig side in politics; besides this he used to receive the
_Ecclesiastical Gazette_ once a month, but he saw no other papers,