He could not help thinking that if he had but the money, the value, of a single much-despised pony that drew a greengrocer’s cart he should be almost a prince. He passed under Temple Bar, and entered the busy Strand, walking, as it happened—events always happen, and no one can say what that word really means—on the right hand pavement, facing westwards. Painfully and wearily walking, he came to the church where the pavement makes a détour, and hesitated for a moment whether to cross to the other side or go round the church, and decided, as the road was dirty, and his old boots thin and full of holes, to follow the pavement. “Circumstances over which we have no control”—these circumstances generally commence in the smallest, least noticeable trifles. It so happened—there it is again—will anyone explain why it so happened?—that as he reached the entrance to Holywell Street, he glanced up it, and saw for the first time that avenue of old books. The author’s instinct made him first pause, and then go up it—he was tired, but he must go and look. Dingy and dirty, but tempting to a man whose library had been obtained by wiring hares. He thought, with a sigh, how many more books he could have bought with his money had he known of the existence of this cheap mart, or had he had any access to it. Here was Bohn’s Plato—for which he had paid a hardly got thirty shillings—marked up at fifteen shillings, slightly soiled it was true, but what did that matter? Here was old Herodotus—Bohn’s—marked at eighteen-pence, the very book which had cost him three hares, including carriage. The margins were all scribbled over—odd faces and odder animals rudely sketched in pen and ink, evidently some schoolboy’s crib. But what did that matter, so long as the text was complete—he cared for nothing but the text. As he lingered and heard the bells chiming seven o’clock, his eye caught sight of a little book called “A Fortune for a Shilling.” It was a catching title; he remembered seeing it lying upon the itinerant bookseller’s stall in front of the Sternhold Hall. He looked at it, weighed it in his hand. He smiled sadly at his own folly. He had but fifteen pence in his pocket, and to think of throwing a whole shilling away upon such a lottery! It was absurd—childish; and yet the book fascinated him. The bookseller’s assistant came out, ostensibly to dust the books—really to see that none were pocketed. Aymer ran his eye down the pages of the book, feeling all the while as if he were cheating the bookseller of his money. The assistant said, “Only one shilling, sir; a chance for everybody, sir, in that book.” Aymer shut his eyes to his own folly, paid the money, and returned into the Strand with threepence left. Chapter Six. He repented his folly very speedily, for the landlady had advanced him half-a-crown two days before for some necessaries, and now asked him for the money.