“Of course. Dinner will be ready in half an hour. But our rates—well, you see, there is no other hotel in these parts, and the rates might seem unreasonable. Shall I mention them?” “Not till after dinner, please.” Off she went without another word, and Marvin drew a long breath. He rose and moved round the room. He picked up a daily paper, laid it down, and picked up the only other journal in sight, the current number of a philological review. The cover bore the table of contents, and the second article was entitled “The Algonquin Pronominal System,” by Ambrose Rich. He turned to the end of the article and found it communicated from Upper Encampment, Michigan! He reverently laid the Algonquin pronominal system back on the table and turned to the shelves. Books in every language he had ever heard of, grammars by the yard, tomes that keep the buyer poor, and not a single recent volume except the last edition of the Britannica! Finally in an obscure corner the gleam of gold revealed the name “Rich” some six or eight times repeated. He drew forth the three largest volumes, opened one, and read: “The Complete Works of Cornelius Tacitus, edited with English notes, critical and explanatory, by Ambrose Rich.” He carried those three volumes out to the porch and solemnly sat down to educate himself. Half an hour was not much, but he must do what he could. His Latin was mostly oxides long ago, but he could read English if not too hard, and he read a crisp summary of the Germania. He read of Angles and Saxons and stem family purity. He read of amber, the first substance to give away the electric constitution of things, though the editor was evidently innocent of any physics since Lucretius. Amber was own cousin to the pepper on the editor’s table, but doubtless the old man cared nothing for such relationships. And then, glory be, he discovered who Agricola was. Once upon a time, when St. Paul was yet alive and rather disapproving matrimony, the young and nervy Tacitus presented himself before General Agricola with a request for the hand of his daughter. Agricola consented like a man, and went off to govern Britain, where he doubtless set the Mahans to draining marshes. Enough. He would imitate this Tacitus. He would find and face the caustic old scholar, and be scowled at by fierce blue eyes from under beetling brows, and register as a candidate. There must be others, but they couldn’t be worse than the Germans at Mezy. The dog seemed to understand perfectly, and so they set off up the path. Chapter 33. Arsenic They had not gone a hundred feet when Marvin thought he heard a bar of sacred music floating out of space. It was a man’s voice, and the words were faint, but they sounded like “joy of heaven to earth come down.” And they seemed to lead his eye up the hill to a point where the path entered a glade in the cedars. He could see a spot of yellow there, as if buttercups made a patch of orpiment.