the very two words of which he was in
search, staring him in the face, as it were,
with all the emphasis of the largest capital
letters!

He listened for a moment to assure himself
that his master was not moving in the house;
then turned to the first leaf of the book with
the intention of looking it over carefully
page by page, from beginning to end. The
first leaf was a blank. The second leaf
had an inscription written at the top of it,
in faded ink, which contained these words
and initials:—"Rare. Only six copies printed.
J. A. T." Below, on the middle of the leaf,
was the printed dedication:—"To John
Arthur Treverton, Esquire, Lord of the
Manor of Porthgenna, One of His Majesty's
Justices of the Peace, F. R. S., &c. &c. &c.,
this Work, in which an attempt is made to
describe the ancient and honoured Mansion
of his Ancestors." There were many more
lines, filled to bursting with all the largest
and most obsequious words to be found in
the Dictionary, but Shrowl wisely
abstained from giving himself the trouble of
reading them, and turned over at once to the
title page.

There, indeed, were the all-important
words:—"The History and Antiquities of
PORTHGENNA TOWER, From the period of its
first erection, to the present time; comprising
interesting genealogical particulars
relating to the Treverton family: with an
inquiry into the Origin of Gothic Architecture,
and a few thoughts on the Theory of Fortification
after the period of the Norman
Conquest. By the Reverend Job Dark, D.D.,
Rector of Porthgenna. The whole adorned
with Portraits, Views, and Plans, executed
in the highest style of Art. Not Published.
Printed by Spaldock and Grimes, Truro,
1734."

That was the title-page. The next leaf
contained an engraved view of Porthgenna
Tower, from the West. Then came several
pages, devoted to The Origin Of Gothic
Architecture. Then more pages, explaining The
Norman Theory of Fortification. These were
succeeded by another engraving—Porthgenna
Tower, from the East. After that followed
more reading, under the title of The Treverton
Family; and then came the third engraving
—Porthgenna Tower, from the North.
Shrowl paused there, and looked with
interest at the leaf opposite the print. It only
announced more reading still, about the
Erection of the Mansion; and this was
succeeded by engravings from family portraits
in the gallery at Porthgenna. Placing his left
thumb between the leaves to mark the place,
Shrowl impatiently turned to the end of the
book, to see what he could find there. The
last leaf contained a plan of the stables; the
leaf before that, presented a plan of the north
garden; and on the next leaf—turning
backward—was the very thing described in
Robert Chennery's letter a plan of the
interior arrangement of the north side of the
house!

Shrowl's first impulse on making this
discovery, was to carry the book away to the
safest hiding-place he could find for it,
preparatory to secretly offering it for sale, when,
the messenger called the next morning for an
answer to the letter. A little reflection,
however, convinced him that a proceeding of this
sort bore a dangerously close resemblance to
the act of thieving, and might get him into
trouble if the person with whom he desired
to deal, chose to go through the ceremony of
asking him any preliminary questions touching
his right to the volume which he wanted
to dispose of. The only alternative that
remained, if the idea of possessing himself of
the book were abandoned, was to make the
best copy he could of the Plan, and to traffic
with that, as a document which the most
scrupulous person in the world need not
hesitate to purchase.

Resolving, after some consideration, to
undergo the trouble of making the copy rather
than run the risk of purloining the book,
Shrowl stole down to the kitchen as softly as
he could, took from one of the drawers of
the dresser an old stump of a pen, a bottle of
ink, and a crumpled half-sheet of dirty letter-
paper; and returned to the garret to copy
the Plan as he best might. It was of the
simplest kind, and it occupied but a small
portion of the page; yet it presented, to his
eyes, a hopelessly involved and intricate
appearance, when he now examined it for the
second time.

The rooms were represented by rows of
small squares, with names neatly printed
inside them; and the positions of doors,
staircases, and passages, were indicated by
parallel lines of various lengths and breadths.
After much cogitation, frowning, and pulling
at his beard, it occurred to Shrowl that the
easiest method of copying the Plan would be
to cover it with the letter-paper—which,
though hardly half the size of the page, was
large enough to spread over the engraving
on it—and then to trace the lines which he
saw through the paper, as carefully as he
could, with his pen and ink. He puffed, and
snorted, and grumbled, and got red in the
face over his task; but he accomplished it at
last—bating certain drawbacks in the shape
of blots and smears—in a sufficiently creditable
manner; then stopped to let the ink
dry and to draw his breath freely, before he
attempted to do anything more.

The next obstacle to be overcome,
consisted in the difficulty of copying the names
of the rooms, which were printed inside the
squares. Fortunately for Shrowl, who was.
one of the clumsiest of mankind in the use
of the pen, none of the names were very long.
As it was, he found the greatest difficulty in
writing them in sufficiently small characters
to fit into the squares. One name in
particular—that of The Myrtle Room—