d as he roared along the highway, striking the feet of
the charitable with the wand which was the emblem of his profession.

Only the Prophet was solemn on this delicious afternoon. People looked
at him and thought that he must surely be the richest man of the town.
His face was so sad.

He wound across the whirlpool, where the green image postures to the
human streams that riot below it. He saw beneath their rooves of ostrich
feathers the girls shake their long earrings above sweet violets and
roses fainting with desire to be bought by country cousins.

"Where is eleven hundred Z, if you please?" he asked the Shaftesbury
Avenue policeman.

"Jellybrand's sir? On the right between the cream shop and the engine
warehouse, just opposite the place where they sell parrots, after that
there patent medicine depot."

The Prophet bowed, thinking of the blessings of knowledge. In a moment
he stood before the library and glanced at its dirty window. He saw
several letters lying against the glass. One was addressed to "Miss
Minerva Partridge." He stepped in, wondering what she was like.

Jellybrand's Library was a small, square room containing a letter rack,
a newspaper stand, a bookcase and a counter. It was fitted up with
letters, papers, books, and a big boy with a bulging head. The
last-named stood behind the counter, stroking his irregular profile with
one hand, and throwing a box of J nibs into the air and catching it with
the other. Upon the Prophet's entrance this youth obligingly dropped the
nibs accidentally upon the floor, and arranged his sharp and anemic
face in an expression of consumptive inquiry. The Prophet approached the
counter softly, and allowed the sable with which his coat was trimmed to
rest against it.

"Did a boy messenger call here a few days ago with a note for Mr.
Malkiel?" he asked.

The young librarian assumed an attitude of vital suspicion and the
expression of a lynx.

"For Malkiel the Second, sir?" he replied in a piercing soprano voice.

"Yes," said the Prophet. "A boy messenger with four medals. There was
a crest on the envelope--an elephant rampant surrounded by a swarm of
bees."

A dogged look of combined terror and resolution overspread the young
librarian's countenance.

"There's been no elephant and no swarm of bees in here," he said with
trembling curtness.

"You are sure you would have remembered the circumstance if there had
been?"

"Rather! What do you think? We don't