tter from his place in Devonshire this morning.
They've asked me to send them some one down to catalogue his library.
They want an expert, and he must go at once and finish by the
twenty-seventh, or it's no use. Dear me, where is that letter?"

Keith goaded his brain to an agonizing activity. It seemed to him
that some such proposal had been made to him before. But where or when
he couldn't for the life of him remember.

"Pilkington says he told you something about it, last night. I've
heard from him this morning, too."

Pilkington--he remembered now. Dicky had bothered him about a library
last night; and he had wished Dicky at the devil. He beat his brains
till he struck from them an illuminating flash (Lord, how it hurt
too!).

"He didn't say it was the Harden Library."

"It is, though." Isaac's coarse forehead flushed with triumph. "He's
promised me the refusal of it when it comes into the market."

At any other time Keith would have been interested; but his head ached
too much now. Still he was not too far gone to recognize the magnitude
of the affair.

"You'll have to go down and look at it," continued Isaac persuasively,
"and here's the opportunity. You go on their business, and do mine at
the same time, and get well paid for it, too."

"I don't quite like going that way. If the thing's got to be sold why
do they want it catalogued?"

"That's their business, not mine."

"It looks like 'their' mistake, whoever they are. Where's the letter?"

"I've mislaid it. That's not my business either. My business is to
send you off before they find out their mistake. You can catch the
eleven express from Waterloo if you look sharp."

Sharp? Never had he looked less so. Still, with his aching head he
dimly perceived that his Easter was being tampered with.

"And supposing they want me to stay?"

"Stay then. The longer the better."

"I'll go after Easter then. I can't go before. I can't possibly.
It's--it's out of the question."

His brain was clear enough on that point. He had suffered many things
from the brutality of Rickman's; but hitherto its dealings had always
been plain and above-board. It had kept him many an evening working
overtime, it had even exacted an occasional Saturday afternoon; but
it had never before swindled him out of a Bank holiday. The thing was
incredible; it could not be. Rickman's had no rights over his Easter;
whatever happened, that holy festival was indubitably, incontestably
hi