g. "Met a mask with a man behind
it," he had announced to his intimates that same night. "Got a fine nose
for what's worth having. Located that chant book as soon as he laid his
hands on it. I didn't get any farther than the skin of his face and you
won't, either. He has promised to come over, and when you have rubbed up
against him for half an hour, as I did this morning, you will think as I
do."

Since that time, Felix had spent many comforting hours in Kelsey's
little back room. Sometimes he would drop in about nine and remain until
half past ten; at other times, it would be nearer midnight before he
would turn the knob.

As for the shop itself, nothing up and down "The Avenue" was quite as
odd, quite as ramshackly, or quite as picturesque. What the public saw,
on either side of the down-two-steps entrance, was a bench with slanting
shelves, holding a double row of books and two patched glass windows,
protecting disordered heaps of prints, stained engravings, and old
etchings, the whole embedded in dust.

What the owner's intimates saw, once they got inside and continued
to the end of the building, was a low-ceiled room warmed by an
old-fashioned Franklin stove and lighted by a drop covered by a green
shade. All about were easy chairs, a table or two, a sideboard, some
long shelves loaded down with books, and an iron safe which held some
precious manuscripts and one or two early editions.

When the room was shut the shop was open, and when the shop was shut,
the shutters fastened, and the two benches with their books lifted
bodily and brought inside, the little back room, smoke-dried as an old
ham, and as savory and inviting, once you got its flavor, was ready for
his guests.

On one of these rare nights when the room was full, it happened that
the same fifteenth-century chant book, which had brought Tim and Felix
together, was lying on the table. The discussion which followed easily
drifted into the influence of the Roman Catholic church on the art of
the period; Felix maintaining that but for the impetus it gave, neither
the art of illumination nor any of the other arts would at the time have
reached the heights they attained.

"This missal is but an example of it," he continued, drawing the
battered, yellow-stained book toward him. "Whatever these old monks,
with their religious fervor, touched they enriched and glorified,
whether it were an initial letter, as you see here, or an altar-piece;
and more than