Maurice had a good many volumes of his own,—­a great many, according to Paolo’s account; but Paolo’s ideas were limited, and a few well-filled shelves seemed a very large collection to him.  His master frequently sent him to the Public Library for books, which somewhat enlarged his notions; still, the Signor was a very learned man, he was certain, and some of his white books (bound in vellum and richly gilt) were more splendid, according to Paolo, than anything in the Library.

There was no little curiosity to know what were the books that Maurice was in the habit of taking out, and the Librarian’s record was carefully searched by some of the more inquisitive investigators.  The list proved to be a long and varied one.  It would imply a considerable knowledge of modern languages and of the classics; a liking for mathematics and physics, especially all that related to electricity and magnetism; a fancy for the occult sciences, if there is any propriety in coupling these words; and a whim for odd and obsolete literature, like the Parthenologia of Fortunius Licetus, the quaint treatise ’De Sternutatione,’ books about alchemy, and witchcraft, apparitions, and modern works relating to Spiritualism.  With these were the titles of novels and now and then of books of poems; but it may be taken for granted that his own shelves held the works he was most frequently in the habit of reading or consulting.  Not much was to be made out of this beyond the fact of wide scholarship,—­more or less deep it might be, but at any rate implying no small mental activity; for he appeared to read very rapidly, at any rate exchanged the books he had taken out for new ones very frequently.  To judge by his reading, he was a man of letters.  But so wide-reading a man of letters must have an object, a literary purpose in all probability.  Why should not he be writing a novel?  Not a novel of society, assuredly, for a hermit is not the person to report the talk and manners of a world which he has nothing to do with.  Novelists and lawyers understand the art of “cramming” better than any other persons in the world.  Why should not this young man be working up the picturesque in this romantic region to serve as a background for some story with magic, perhaps, and mysticism, and hints borrowed from science, and all sorts of out-of-the-way knowledge which his odd and miscellaneous selection of books furnished him?  That might be, or possibly he was only reading for amusement.  Who could say?

The funds of the Public Library of Arrowhead Village allowed the managers to purchase many books out of the common range of reading.  The two learned people of the village were the rector and the doctor.  These two worthies kept up the old controversy between the professions, which grows out of the fact that one studies nature from below upwards, and the other from above downwards.  The rector maintained that physicians contracted a squint which turns their eyes inwardly, while the muscles which roll their eyes