nexpectedly, and Godwin could not help a momentary
confusion, but he covered it with the tone of self-reproach.

'I am ashamed to say that I am only now taking it up seriously.'

'I don't think you need be ashamed,' said Martin, good-naturedly. 'Even
a mind as active as yours must postpone some studies. Reusch, I
suppose, is sound on that head?'

The inquiry struck Godwin as significant. So Mr. Warricombe attached
importance to the verbal interpretation of the Old Testament.

'Distinctly an authority,' he replied. 'He devotes whole chapters to a
minute examination of the text.'

'If you had more leisure,' Martin began, deliberately, when he had
again reflected, 'I should be disposed to urge you to undertake that
translation.'

Peak appeared to meditate.

'Has the book been used by English writers?' the other inquired.

'A good deal.--It was published in the sixties, but I read it in a new
edition dated a few years ago. Reusch has kept pace with the men of
science. It would be very interesting to compare the first form of the
book with the latest.'

'It would, very.'

Raising his head from the contemplative posture, Godwin exclaimed, with
a laugh of zeal:

'I think I must find time to translate him. At all events, I might
address a proposal to some likely publisher. Yet I don't know how I
should assure him of my competency.'

'Probably a specimen would be the surest testimony.'

'Yes. I might do a few chapters.'

Mr. Warricombe's lapse into silence and brevities intimated to Godwin
that it was time to take leave. He always quitted this room with
reluctance. Its air of luxurious culture affected his senses
deliciously, and he hoped that he might some day be permitted to linger
among the cabinets and the library shelves. There were so many books he
would have liked to take down, some with titles familiar to him, others
which kindled his curiosity when he chanced to observe them. The
library abounded in such works as only a wealthy man can purchase, and
Godwin, who had examined some of them at the British Museum, was filled
with the humaner kind of envy on seeing them in Mr. Warricombe's
possession. Those publications of the Palaeontological Society, one
volume of which (a part of Davidson's superb work on the _Brachiopoda_)
even now lay open within sight--his hand trembled with a desire to
touch them! And those maps of the Geological Surveys, British and
foreign, how he would have enjoyed a day's poring o