"If such be his quality, I will pray your company in another chamber,
honest Mike, for what I have to say to thee is for thy private
ear.--Meanwhile, I pray you, sir, to abide us in this apartment, and
without leaving it; there be those in this house who would be alarmed by
the sight of a stranger."

Tressilian acquiesced, and the two worthies left the apartment together,
in which he remained alone to await their return. [See Note 1. Foster,
Lambourne, and the Black Bear.]



CHAPTER IV.

Not serve two masters?--Here's a youth will try it--
Would fain serve God, yet give the devil his due;
Says grace before he doth a deed of villainy,
And returns his thanks devoutly when 'tis acted,--OLD PLAY.

The room into which the Master of Cumnor Place conducted his worthy
visitant was of greater extent than that in which they had at first
conversed, and had yet more the appearance of dilapidation. Large oaken
presses, filled with shelves of the same wood, surrounded the room, and
had, at one time, served for the arrangement of a numerous collection
of books, many of which yet remained, but torn and defaced, covered with
dust, deprived of their costly clasps and bindings, and tossed together
in heaps upon the shelves, as things altogether disregarded, and
abandoned to the pleasure of every spoiler. The very presses themselves
seemed to have incurred the hostility of those enemies of learning who
had destroyed the volumes with which they had been heretofore filled.