He would then have passed on had it not been by the strangest coincidence that at that very instant his eye fell on a little pile of books at the front of the stall, and the book on the top of the pile had the very name of his holiday task: “The Talisman,” by Sir Walter Scott, Bart. It was the strangest looking book, very different indeed from the book at home. He stared at it as though it was a lucky charm. How strange that it should be there and appearing so oddly different from the book at home. It was dressed in shabby and faded yellow covers; he picked it up. On the outside he read in large letters: “Stead’s Penny Classics!” Penny! Could it be that this book was only a penny? Why, if so, he could buy it and four others like it! This sudden knowledge gave him a new proprietary interest in the book, as when you discover that a stranger at an hotel lives, when at home, in your own street! Opening the little book he saw that the print was very small indeed, that the lines were crooked and irregular, here very black and there only a dim grey. But in the very fact of this faint print there was something mysterious and appealing. No notes here, of course, and no undue emphasis on this “Scott, Bart.” man, simply “The Talisman,” short and sweet. Old Mr. Porter, observing the unusual sight of a small boy actually taking a book in his hands and reading it, was interested. He had seen the small boy often enough, and although he would never admit it to himself, had liked his look of sturdy independence and healthy self-assurance. He had not thought that the boy was a reader. He leaned forward: “Only a penny,” he wheezed (he suffered terribly from asthma, and the boys of the town used to call after him “Old Barrel Organ”), “and just the story for a boy like you.” “I’ll have it,” said Jeremy with sudden pride. He was of half a mind to buy some of the others—he saw that one more was by “Scott, Bart.”—but no. He would see how this one was before he ventured any farther. He walked off with his prize. II That night he did what he had never done before, he read in bed. He was doing as he well knew what was absolutely forbidden, and the novelty of the event, the excitement of his disobedience, the strange wobbly light that the candle flung as it shifted when his movements were very impetuous, in its insecure china saucer, the way the lines of the printed page ran tumultuously together, all these things helped his sense of the romantic.