onviction that he should find some mention of the
charters, she went into the library, and wondered which of the several
thousands of books would interest her till the others came in.

The library was a large room, the walls of which were lined with books
from the floor to the ceiling. In order to place the higher shelves
within reach, a light balcony of polished oak ran round the four walls,
about equidistant from the floor and the ceiling. Ruth went up the tiny
corkscrew staircase in the wall, which led to the balcony, and settling
herself comfortably in the low, wide window-seat, took out one volume
after another of those that came within her reach. These shelves by the
window where she was sitting had somehow a different look to the rest.
Old books and new, white vellum and card-board, were herded together
without any apparent order, and with no respect of bindings. Here a
splendid morocco "Novum Organum" was pushed in beside a cheap and much
worn edition of Marcus Aurelius; there Emerson and Plato and Shakespeare
jostled each other on the same shelf, while, just below, "Don Quixote"
was pressed into the uncongenial society of Carlyle on one side and
Confucius on the other. As she pulled out one book after another, she
noticed that the greater part of them had Charles's name in them. Ruth's
curiosity was at once aroused. No doubt this was the little corner in
his great house in which he chose to read, and these were his favorite
books which he had arranged so close to his hand. If we can judge our
fellow-creatures at all, which is doubtful, it is by the books they
read, and by those which, having read, they read again. She looked at
the various volumes in the window-seat beside her with new interest, and
opened the first one she took up. It was a collection of translations
from the Persian poets, gentlemen of the name of Jemshid, Sadi, and
Hafiz, of whom she had never heard. As she turned over the pages, she
heard the ringing of horses' hoofs, and, looking out from her point of
observation, saw Charles and Lady Grace cantering up the short wide
approach, and clattering out of sight again behind the great stone
archway. She turned back to her book, and was reading an ode here and
there, wondering to see how the same thoughts that work within us to-day
had lived with man so many hundred years ago, when her eye was caught by
some writing on the margin of a page as she turned it over. A single
sentence on the page was st