‘I am not good,’ said his companion, gravely, ‘but I suppose I am kind enough. It is much easier, my young friend, to be kind than good. Well, now I am going to take you to this gentleman.’ She put on her cloak and bonnet, and led the way to the stage door of the theatre. A closed carriage, well appointed, was at the door, in waiting for her, and they took their seats. In a few minutes they were whirled to their destination—a huge red house set in a courtyard, with which William Henry was unacquainted, or which in the perturbation of his mind he failed to recognise. They passed through certain corridors into a large room looking on a garden. It was handsomely furnished; a harp stood in one corner, a piano in the other; the walls were hung with beautiful pictures. But what aroused William Henry’s amazement, and prevented him from giving his attention elsewhere, was the circumstance that on a table by the window were arranged the whole collection of the Shakespeare papers. ‘You are looking for your father’s blood upon them,’ said Mrs. Jordan, smiling; ‘you are thinking to yourself that he must surely have been cut to pieces ere he would have permitted them to leave his hands. But the fact is—— Hush, here comes your future patron.’ William Henry was used to a patron, and for that matter to a sufficiently mysterious one; but for the moment he was devoured by curiosity, mingled with a certain awe. The appearance of the new-comer, if he had expected to see anyone very magnificent, must have been a disappointment to him, for it certainly was not of an imposing kind. There entered the room, so rapidly that he almost seemed to run, a young man of thirty, somewhat inclined to corpulence, with a cheery good-natured face, but decidedly commonplace in its expression. ‘Well, well, Dorothy, you see I’m here,’ he said, without taking the least notice of the stranger’s presence. ‘Now let us see these manuscripts—wonderful manuscripts—and get it over.’ He spoke with great volubility, and plumped down on a chair by the table as if in a great hurry. ‘What funny writing, and what queer ink and paper! and what great seals! Shakespeare was never Lord Chancellor, was he?’ ‘I don’t think he was, sir,’ said Mrs, Jordan, laughing. ‘It was the fashion in those days for deeds to wear fob and watch and chain.’ ‘Fobs, fobs? I see no fobs. So this is “Lear;“ I’ve seen “Lear.“ The play where everybody has their eyes put out. So he wrote it like this, did he? I wonder how anybody could read it. Hambllett, Hambllett; I never heard of him. Notes of hand. Gad! I know _them_ pretty well.’ ‘This is the young gentleman, sir, to whom we owe the discovery of all these manuscripts,’ said Mrs. Jordan, drawing his attention to William Henry. ‘Aye, aye,’ said the new comer, wheeling his chair round to get a good view of William Henry’s face. ‘You found them, did you; those that hide can find; that’s what people tell me, you know.’