outbreak has relieved me. Now let me have a look
at the book."

He dragged the volume towards him, and despite the feeling of
antagonism with which it had inspired him, and despite the cynical
attitude he had, up to the present, adopted towards the supernatural,
he speedily became engrossed. On a few leaves, somewhat clumsily
inserted between the cover and first page of the book, Hamar read an
account, presumably in the author's own penmanship, of how he, Thomas
Maitland, after being shipwrecked, had remained on Inisturk Island for
a fortnight before being rescued, and had spent the greater portion of
that time in examining the books, etc., in the chest he had found--his
only food--shell-fish and a keg of mildewy ship's biscuits.

He was taken, so the account ran, by his rescuers, on the barque
_Hannah_, to London, where he lived for five years. His lodgings were
in Cheapside, and it was there that he compiled his work on Atlantis,
having obtained his subject matter from the Atlantean books he had
managed to bring with him, and which, after an enormous amount of
perseverance and labour, he had translated into English. Though these
books were subsequently destroyed in a big fire that demolished the
entire street, luckily for him, he had sent his MS. to the publishers,
Messrs. Bettesworth and Batley, a week or so before the conflagration
broke out; so that he was, at any rate, spared the loss of his own
arduous and invaluable work.

The publishers did not accept the MS. at once. At that time there were
very severe laws in operation against anything savouring of witchcraft
and magic, and as the manuscript dealt at length with these subjects,
and in a manner that left no doubt whatever that he, Thomas Maitland,
had practised sorcery extensively, Messrs. Bettesworth and Batley were
forced to consider whether it would be injurious to them to publish
it. Mrs. Bettesworth was eventually consulted--as indeed she always
was, on extraordinary occasions--and her interest in the MS. being
roused, she decided in its favour. Within a week of its publication,
however, it was suppressed by law; all the copies saving three
presentation ones to the author, which he successfully concealed, were
destroyed; Messrs. Bettesworth and Batley were put in the stocks on
Ludgate Hill and fined heavily, and he, Thomas Maitland, was ordered
to be arrested, flogged and imprisoned.

"But," wrote Maitland, "I was not to be caught napping. My previous