fully equipped men earn their living having
been denied Tim, he had passed his boyhood days in one of the
small, down-town libraries cataloguing the books. With this came the
opportunity to attend the auction sales when some rare volume was to be
bid for, he representing the library. A small shop of his own followed
in the lower part of the town, and then the one a little below Kling's,
where he lived alone with only a caretaker to look after his wants.

Kelsey had arrived one morning shortly after Felix had entered Kling's
service, carrying a heavily bound book which he laid on a glass case
under Otto's nose. "Take a look at it, Otto," he said, after pausing a
moment to get his breath, the volume being heavy. "There is more brass
than leather on the outside, and more paint than text on the inside. I
have two others from the same collection. It is in your line rather than
in mine, I take it. What do you think of it? Could you sell it?"

Kling dropped his glasses from his forehead to the bridge of his flat
nose. "Vell! Dot is a funny-looking book, Tim. Dot is awful old, you
know."

"Yes, seventeenth century, I think," replied Tim.

"Vot you tink, Mr. O'Day? Ain't dot a k'veer book? Oh, you don't have
met my new clerk, have you, Tim? Vell dot's funny, for he lives over at
Kitty's. Vell, dis is him--Mr. Felix O'Day. Tim Kelsey is an olt friend
of mine, Mr. O'Day. You must have seen dot k'veer shop vich falls down
into de cellar from de sidevalk--vell, dat's Tim's."

Felix smiled good-naturedly, bowed to Kelsey, and taking the huge,
brass-bound volume in his hands, passed his fingers gently across the
leather and then over the heavy clamps, turning the book to the light
of the window so as to examine the chasing the closer. Tim, who had been
watching him, remarked the ease with which he handled the volume and the
care with which he ran his eye along the edges of the inside of the back
before paying the slightest attention to the quality of the vellum or
to the title-page.

"Did you say you thought it was seventeenth century, Mr. Kelsey?" Felix
asked thoughtfully.

"Yes, I should say so."

"I would put it somewhat earlier. The binding is wholly tool-work, much
older than the brasses, which, I think, have been renewed--at least the
clamps--certainly one of them is of a later period. The vellum and
the illuminated text"--again he scrutinized the title-page, this
time turning a few of the inside leaves--"is before Gut