“Ah!” he answered. “How? And why it had remained undelivered? I can submit only a plausible theory. A second-hand book-shop, gentlemen, is a mine of reference. Research presently revealed to me that this Carolus Victor, Chaplain of Newgate, had died--suddenly, by presumption--in that very year, 1679, which dates not only his letter, but the last entries in his diary where it was found. Suppose, then, the letter written by this Victor, and never delivered to him to whom it was addressed; suppose the book containing it tied up unexamined with the deceased’s other manuscript effects, and put away on some remote shelf and forgotten; suppose some jealous no-Popery bookdealer snatching it years later from the flames of Newgate, and consigning it to his own store, where, in the excitement, it was again forgotten till finally brought to light in the sale-room, a scorched and smoke-stained packet to excite the ridicule of the dealers. Suppose anything or nothing; conjecture and account as you will. The fact remains that Carolus Victor’s commonplace book came intact, and holding fast to its enclosure, into our hands. ... Into our hands--into _our_ hands, I say. Were we not brothers, twins, partners? Abel, before bidding for it, had known or guessed nothing of what the packet contained. He had bought the lot, a business transaction, merely to spite me. And yet now he would claim the whole fruits for himself!” A fury and excitement took the narrator’s voice at this point. The heat he exhaled was communicated to us in part. “Go on!” I said, giving a vigorous kick into the water. “There was a letter in the book, you say. What was it about?” He struggled with himself a moment, dropped his face into his hands with a groan, looked up, and resumed in a more ordered voice--