"Who's that describing the confidence-man?" here came from the berth again. "Awake in his sleep, sure enough, ain't he?" said the cosmopolitan, again looking off in surprise. "Same voice as before, ain't it? Strange sort of dreamy man, that. Which is his berth, pray?" "Never mind _him_, sir," said the old man anxiously, "but tell me truly, did you, indeed, read from the book just now?" "I did," with changed air, "and gall and wormwood it is to me, a truster in man; to me, a philanthropist." "Why," moved, "you don't mean to say, that what you repeated is really down there? Man and boy, I have read the good book this seventy years, and don't remember seeing anything like that. Let me see it," rising earnestly, and going round to him. "There it is; and there--and there"--turning over the leaves, and pointing to the sentences one by one; "there--all down in the 'Wisdom of Jesus, the Son of Sirach.'" "Ah!" cried the old man, brightening up, "now I know. Look," turning the leaves forward and back, till all the Old Testament lay flat on one side, and all the New Testament flat on the other, while in his fingers he supported vertically the portion between, "look, sir, all this to the right is certain truth, and all this to the left is certain truth, but all I hold in my hand here is apocrypha." "Apocrypha?" "Yes; and there's the word in black and white," pointing to it. "And what says the word? It says as much as 'not warranted;' for what do college men say of anything of that sort? They say it is apocryphal. The word itself, I've heard from the pulpit, implies something of uncertain credit. So if your disturbance be raised from aught in this apocrypha," again taking up the pages, "in that case, think no more of it, for it's apocrypha." "What's that about the Apocalypse?" here, a third time, came from the berth.