ost every one would have done "in the premises"--an act
which was quite sufficient to make one break that part of the commandment
which refers to envy. Surely a man would be inhuman not to, having once
seen Daisy Snarle!

"I am not angry, but pained; I cannot tell you why. I wish you to promise
me something."

"I will. What is it?"

"That you will not doubt me, whatever may occur in connection with this
necklace--that you will love me, though I may be unable to explain
condemning circumstances, or dispel the doubts of others."

"I promise that. But how strange," thought Daisy. "I am sorry that I was so
childish as to take the necklace. Put it away, Mortimer, and forget that I
did so."

Mortimer's cheerfulness returned, and he commenced reading the poem at the
place where he had interrupted himself. Just as he finished the last verse,
telling how, ages long ago,

"The lovers fled away into the storm,"

Mrs. Snarle awoke with a jerk, and went to knitting as though she had been
doing nothing else the whole evening--a harmless subterfuge peculiar to old
people.

XI.

_Of making many books there is no end._

ECCLESIASTES XII., 12.

XI.

MORTIMER HAS AN INTERVIEW WITH THE GREAT PUBLISHER, AND MR. FLINT MAKES A
DISCOVERY.

_H. H. Hardwill, Publisher--Criminal Literature--Alliterative
Titles--Goldwood--Poor Authors--A Heaven for them in the
Perspective--Flint's Discovery, and the Horns of his Dilemma._

Mortimer looked up and read the sign--"H. H. Hardwill, Publisher." His
heart half-failed him, and he stood looking in the large, book-filled
window, with that romance which was to startle the literary world folded
quietly under his arm, like any common paper. What kind of a man is Mr.
Hardwill? he thought. Is he a large man, with a heavy watch-chain, or a
thin, sky-rockety piece of humanity, dressed in black, and tipped off with
red hair? Was he a cold, cast-iron man, like Flint? or a simple, sorrowful
one, like Snarle that was? But this last idea melted of itself. How could
the famous publisher resemble the poor, unobtrusive Snarle? He, Mr.
Hardwill, who received notes from the great Hiawatha, and hob-nobbed with
Knickerbocker Irving; he, who owned a phial of yellow sand, which had been
taken from a scorching desert with an unpronounceable name, and presented
to him by the Oriental Bayard; he, who chatted with genial Mr.
Sparrow-grass--God bless him!--(Sparrow-gr