Mr. Rudge dwelt at the back of the shop. Most of his time was passed in a small, dark, and stuffy sitting-room, where he ate his meals and applied himself to Culture at every reasonable opportunity. Now that he had an assistant, he was able to bestow more time than ever upon the things of the mind. He spent half his days and half his nights taking endless notes, in a meticulous hand, for a great work he had conceived forty-two years ago when he had migrated from Birmingham to the metropolis. This _magnum opus_ was to be called "A History of the World," and was to consist of forty volumes, with a supplementary volume as an index, making forty-one in all. Each was to have four hundred and eighty pages, which were to be divided into twenty-four chapters. There were to be no illustrations. Four decades had passed since the golden hour in which this scheme was born. In a spare room above the shop were a number of large tin trunks full of notes for the great work, all very carefully coded and docketed. These were the fruits of forty-two years' amazing industry. Every year these labors grew more comprehensive, more unceasing. But the odd thing was that only the first sentence of the first volume of the opus was yet in being. It ran, "'In the beginning,' says Holy Writ, 'was the Word.'" And even that pregnant sentence had yet to be put on paper. At present, it lay like the text of the History itself, in the head of the author. With Henry Harper to mind the shop, the historian was able to devote more time to the work of his life. This was a fortunate matter, because Mr. Rudge was already within a few months of seventy, and forty volumes and an index had yet to be written. As a fact, considerable portions of the index were already in existence; and during Henry Harper's first week in the front shop it received a valuable accession in the form of "Bulrushes, Vol. IX., pp. 243-245. Moses in, Vol. III., p. 120." Careful and voluminous notes upon Bulrushes, based upon an unknown work that had lately arrived in a consignment of second-hand books from Sheffield, went to line the bottom of yet another large trunk which had been added recently to the attic above the shop. IV The day soon came when Henry Harper said good-by to Mr. Horrobin and Bowdon House. Mr. Rudge took a fancy to him from the first. It may have been his high credentials partly; no one could have been equipped with a better start in life than the imprimatur of such a scholar and such a gentleman as Mr. Esme Horrobin. But at the same time there was much to like in the young man himself. He was diligent and respectful and his heart was in his work; also, and perhaps this counted more with Mr. Rudge than anything else, he was very anxious to improve himself. And Mr. Rudge, who was an altruist as well as a lover of Culture, was very anxious to improve him.