For there was a postscript, in another hand, which stated:  “Mr. Aglen died November 25th, 1866, and is buried in the cemetery of Johnson City, Ill.”

The old man folded the letter carefully, and laid it on the table.  Then he rose and walked across the room to the safe, which stood with open door in the corner furthest from the fireplace.  Among its contents was a packet sealed and tied up in red tape, endorsed:  “For Iris.  To be given to her on her twenty-first birthday.  From her father.”

“It will be her twenty-first birthday,” he said, “in three weeks.  Then I must give her the packet.  So—­so—­with the portrait of her father, and his marriage-certificate.”  He fell into a fit of musing, with the papers in his hand.  “She will be safe, whatever happens to me; and as for me, if I lose her—­of course I shall lose her.  Why, what will it matter?  Have I not lost all, except Iris?  One must not be selfish.  Oh, Iris, what a surprise—­what a surprise I have in store for you!”

He placed the letter he had been reading within the tape which fastened the bundle, so that it should form a part of the communication to be made on Iris’s birthday.

“There,” he said, “now I shall read this letter no more.  I wonder how many times I have read it in the last eighteen years, and how often I have wondered what the child’s fortune would be?  In three weeks—­in three short weeks.  Oh, Iris, if you only knew!”

He put back the letters and the packet, locked the safe, and resumed his seat.

The red-eyed assistant, still gumming and pasting his slips with punctilious regard to duty, had been following his master’s movements with curiosity.

“Counting his investments again as usual,” Mr. James murmured.  “Ah! and adding ’em up!  Always at it.  Oh, what a trade it must have been once!”

Just then there appeared in the door a gentleman.  He was quite shabby, and even ragged in his dress, but he was clearly a gentleman.  He was no longer young; his shoulders were bent, and he had the unmistakable stamp and carriage of a student.

“Guv’nor’s at home,” said the assistant briefly.

The visitor walked into the sanctum.  He had under his arm half-a-dozen volumes, which, without a word, he laid before Mr. Emblem, and untied the string.

“You ought to know this book,” he said without further introduction.

Mr. Emblem looked doubtfully at the visitor.

“You sold it to me twenty-five years ago,” he went on, “for five pounds.”

“I did.  And I remember now.  You are Mr. Frank Farrar.  Why, it is twenty-five years ago!”

“I have bought no more books for twenty years and more,” he replied.

“Sad—­sad!  Dear me—­tut, tut!—­bought no books?  And you, Mr. Farrar, once my best customer.  And now—­you do not mean to say that you are going to sell—­that you actually want to sell—­this precious book?”

“I am selling, one by one, all my books,” replied the other with a sigh.  “I am going down hill, Emblem, fast.”