eyes occupied his mind. His
thoughts ran forward swifter than ever the train would go which in later
years was to bring Hampton Bagot within half-an-hour's journey of
Stratford.

Twice before had he travelled this same way, and both times to the same
place. But now all was changed. The carrier would crack his whip on his
homeward way that evening and sing his snatches of song, but not for
Henry.

For the first time in his life the youth would stretch himself upon an
unfamiliar bed, and hear voices that had never spoken to him before. He
would tread the streets where once the steps of the immortal bard had
been as common as his own comings and goings at the Hampton Post Office.
Till now he had dreamed what life might be in a town larger than his
native hamlet, and this night he would begin to know, to live it.

The wayside wild flowers, so recently part and parcel of his daily life,
paled before his eyes when he thought of the temple of books toward
which his course was bent. The smell of the new bindings, and the
mouldy suggestions of old volumes, were sweeter to him for the moment
than the scented hedgerows. Already he had built up for himself the
figure of his Mr. Ephraim Griggs.

A man of medium height, somewhat bent in the back, high forehead,
intelligent face, eyes aided with spectacles in their constant task of
examining the treasures stacked around.

His hair? Grey--yes, of course, it must be grey; thin to baldness on the
top, but abundant at the back of the head. Clothes? Old-fashioned, no
doubt; negligent, certainly; yet not altogether slovenly.

He saw the figure, vivid as life, moving about the shop, talking with
innocent display of erudition to some wealthy customer, or half
reluctantly selling a costly volume from his shelves.

This dream-companion kept him company all the way, and it was only in a
listless fashion that he chatted with the carrier, to whom books were no
better than common lumber.

Stratford was reached early in the afternoon, and as the waggon rumbled
over the Clopton Bridge, Henry thought that the scene presented here by
the soft flowing Avon, with the spire of Shakespeare's Church softly
etched on the sky, and the strange masonry of the world-famed Memorial
Theatre in the middle distance, was the fairest man could see.

The thoughtfulness of his father had arranged for Henry a lodging near
to Rother Street, and thither the carrier undertook to drive him before
stopping at the m