"Course these are medical secrets in a way. Know it won't go any farther. But it's curious, isn't it? Appearances are deceptive--damned deceptive. That's what they are. Brandon's brain's never been his strong point. Might go any moment." "Dear me, dear me," said Ronder. "I'm sorry to hear that." "Oh, I don't mean," said Puddifoot, puffing and blowing out his cheeks like a cherub in a picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds, "that he'll die to- morrow, you know--or have a stroke either. But he ain't as secure as he looks. And he don't take care of himself as he should." Outside the Library Ronder paused. "Going in here for a book, doctor. See you later." "Yes, yes," said Puddifoot, his eyes staring up and down the street, as though they would burst out of his head. "Very good--very good. See you later then," and so went blowing down the hill. Ronder passed under the gloomy portals of the Library and found his way, through faith rather than vision, up the stone stairs that smelt of mildew and blotting-paper, into the high dingy room. He had had a sudden desire the night before to read an old story by Bage that he had not seen since he was a boy--the violent and melancholy _Hermsprong_. It had come to him, as it were, in his dreams--a vision of himself rocking in a hammock in his uncle's garden on a wonderful summer afternoon, eating apples and reading _Hermsprong_, the book discovered, he knew not by what chance, in the dusty depths of his uncle's library. He would like to read it again. _Hermsprong_! the very scent of the skin of the apple, the blue-necked tapestry of light between the high boughs came back to him. He was a boy again.... He was brought up sharply by meeting the little red-rimmed eyes of Miss Milton. Red-rimmed to-day, surely, with recent weeping. She sat humped up on her chair, glaring out into the room. "It's all right, Miss Milton," he said, smiling at her. "It's an old book I want. I won't bother you. I'll look for myself." He passed into the further dim secrecies of the Library, whither so few penetrated. Here was an old ladder, and, mounted upon it, he confronted the vanished masterpieces of Holcroft and Radcliffe, Lewis and Jane Porter, Clara Reeve and MacKenzie, old calf-bound ghosts who threw up little clouds of sighing dust as he touched them with his fingers. He was happily preoccupied with his search, balancing his stout body precariously on the trembling ladder, when he fancied that he heard a sigh.