ly attracted to him, and impelled--a feeling
not unfrequent with him--to tell the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth.

"The world itself isn't the most respectable planet in the system, Mr
Cupples," said he; "and no honest inhabitant of it can be always
respectable either."

Mr Cupples chuckled and laughed groggily, muttering somewhere in his
chest--

"You young dog! there's stuff in you!" Then composing himself a little,
he said aloud: "Tell me all about it directly."

Alec obeyed, and, not without emotion, gave Mr Cupples the whole
history of the affair.

"Damn you!" remarked Mr Cupples in a husky voice, as he held out a
trembling hand to Alec, "you're one of the right sort. I'll do anything
for you I can. Where's your Homer?"

So saying, he rose with care and went towards a cupboard in the corner.
His pipe had been so far interrupted during their conversation, that
Alec was now able, by the light of the tallow candle, to see the little
garret room, with its ceiling on one side sloping nearly to the floor,
its walls begrimed with smoke, and the bare plaster covered with
grotesque pencil-drawings--caricatures of Homeric heroes in the guise
of schoolboys, polemic clergymen of the city in the garb of fish-wives
militant, and such like. A bed and a small chest of drawers stood under
the slope of the roof, and the rest of the room was occupied by a
painted table covered with papers, and a chair or two. An old
broadsword leaned against the wall in a corner. A half-open cupboard
revealed bottles, glasses, and a dry-looking cheese. To the
corresponding cupboard, on the other side of the fire, which had lost a
corner by the descent of the roof, Mr Cupples now dragged his slippers,
feeling in his waistcoat pocket, as he went, for the key.--There was
another door still, partly sunk in the slope of the ceiling.

When he opened the cupboard, a dusky glimmer of splendid bindings
filling the whole recess, shone out upon the dingy room. From a shelf
he took a volume of Homer, bound in vellum, with red edges--a copy of
far greater value than Alec had knowledge of books to understand--and
closing the door again, resumed his seat in the easy-chair. Having
found the passage, he read it through aloud in a manner which made
Homer for the first time sound like poetry in Alec's ears, and almost
revealed the hidden significance. Then pouncing at once upon the
shadowy word which was the key to the whole, he laid open th