bookcases filled with literature which had evidently known the
second-hand stall,--most of the Latin poets, a few Italian books,
and some English classics. Not a trace anywhere of the habits and
predilections not unfairly associated with the youth of the shop,
not even a pipe or a cigar-holder. It was while sitting alone here
one evening, half musing, half engaged in glancing over the
advertisements in a paper two days old, that the assistant had been
attracted by the insertion just quoted. He read and re-read it,
became more thoughtful, sighed slightly. Then he moved to the table
and took some note-paper out of a writing-case. Still he seemed to
be in doubt, hesitated in pressing a pen against his thumb-nail, was
on the point of putting the note-paper away again. Ultimately,
however, he sat down to write. He covered four pages with a letter,
which he then proceeded deliberately to correct and alter, till he
had cut it down by about half. Then came another period of doubt
before he decided to make a fair copy. But it was finally made, and
the signature at the foot was: Julian Casti.

He went out at once to the post.

Two days later he received a reply, somewhat longer than his own
epistle. The writer was clearly keeping himself in a tentative
attitude. Still, he wrote something about his own position and his
needs. He was a teacher in a school in South London, living in
lodgings, with his evenings mostly unoccupied. His habits, he
declared, were Bohemian. Suppose, by way of testing each other's
dispositions, they were to interchange views on some book with which
both were likely to be acquainted: say, Keats's poems? In
conclusion, the "O. W." of the advertisement signed himself Osmond
Waymark.