"You have our fullest confidence, Mr. Byrne," said Murray. "We leave you to conduct the case entirely in the way that may seem best to you." Gerald, unperceived by Mr. Murray, passed a slip of paper into Byrne's hand, on which was pencilled these words-- "Say nothing to Mr. M. about money matters. I will call to-morrow and arrange with you." Murray and Gerald walked home together arm-in-arm. The former was in unusually high spirits. "Did I not tell you, Gerald, that a way would be found out of the difficulty before long?" "We are not out of the wood yet, sir," said Gerald, drily. "Certainly not; but we have got a glimpse of daylight. But I cannot hope that you will see with my eyes; I cannot hope that the faith that burns within me will more than faintly warm you." Gerald walked with Murray as far as the corner of Ormond Square, and then stopped the first empty cab that passed him, and hurried back to Harley Street. Murray did not go straight home, but wandered back to a favourite second-hand book-stall, where he was well known. His purchases, it is true, were never of a very extensive character, being always confined to the threepenny, or, at the most, to the sixpenny box. But he was a frequent visitor at the stall, and he always made a point of turning over the entire contents of the box before making up his mind which particular treasure he would ultimately choose for his own. On the present occasion, after half an hour's diligent search, he decided on the extravagance of a double purchase. He bought "Althazar," an Arabian romance, for which he paid sixpence; and a "Treatise on Conic Sections," for which he paid threepence. This done, he walked quietly home, hugging his treasures under his arm, and promising himself a good long read that very evening, in either one volume or the other--it did not matter in the least which. Mr. Murray's small stock of books, all selected from the same receptacle as his present purchases, was indeed a somewhat multifarious one. Nothing modern, nothing frivolous, was to be found there. They were all books that had seen service in their time, and the authors of which were not only dead, but forgotten. "Musings in a Churchyard," and "Travels in Africa in 1755," jostled each other on the same shelf. "A Treatise on the Steam Engine" had heaped a-top of it, as though there were some danger of an explosion, "An Essay on the Measurements and Construction of the Great Pyramid," and a thin volume of elegiac verse "by Mary M.," whoever she may have been.