A few minutes later, reclining at his ease in a huge low chair, and feeling himself unaccountably at home in the most luxuriously appointed and delightful little room he had ever seen, the Rev. Theron Ware sipped his unaccustomed coffee and embarked upon an explanation of his errand.  Somehow the very profusion of scholarly symbols about him—­the great dark rows of encased and crowded book-shelves rising to the ceiling, the classical engravings upon the wall, the revolving book-case, the reading-stand, the mass of littered magazines, reviews, and papers at either end of the costly and elaborate writing-desk—­seemed to make it the easier for him to explain without reproach that he needed information about Abram.  He told them quite in detail the story of his book.

The two others sat watching him through a faint haze of scented smoke, with polite encouragement on their faces.  Father Forbes took the added trouble to nod understandingly at the various points of the narrative, and when it was finished gave one of his little approving chuckles.

“This skirts very closely upon sorcery,” he said smilingly.  “Do you know, there is perhaps not another man in the country who knows Assyriology so thoroughly as our friend here, Dr. Ledsmar.”

“That’s putting it too strong,” remarked the Doctor.  “I only follow at a distance—­a year or two behind.  But I daresay I can help you.  You are quite welcome to anything I have:  my books cover the ground pretty well up to last year.  Delitzsch is very interesting; but Baudissin’s ’Studien zur Semitischen Religionsgeschichte’ would come closer to what you need.  There are several other important Germans—­Schrader, Bunsen, Duncker, Hommel, and so on.”

“Unluckily I—­I don’t read German readily,” Theron explained with diffidence.

“That’s a pity,” said the doctor, “because they do the best work—­not only in this field, but in most others.  And they do so much that the mass defies translation.  Well, the best thing outside of German of course is Sayce.  I daresay you know him, though.”

The Rev. Mr. Ware shook his head mournfully.  “I don’t seem to know any one,” he murmured.

The others exchanged glances.

“But if I may ask, Mr. Ware,” pursued the doctor, regarding their guest with interest through his spectacles, “why do you specially hit upon Abraham?  He is full of difficulties—­enough, just now, at any rate, to warn off the bravest scholar.  Why not take something easier?”

Theron had recovered something of his confidence.  “Oh, no,” he said, “that is just what attracts me to Abraham.  I like the complexities and contradictions in his character.  Take for instance all that strange and picturesque episode of Hagar:  see the splendid contrast between the craft and commercial guile of his dealings in Egypt and with Abimelech, and the simple, straightforward godliness of his later years.  No, all those difficulties only attract me.  Do you happen to know—­of course you would know—­do those German books, or the others, give anywhere any additional details of the man himself and his sayings and doings—­little things which help, you know, to round out one’s conception of the individual?”