‘Distinctly an authority,’ he replied.  ’He devotes whole chapters to a minute examination of the text.’

‘If you had more leisure,’ Martin began, deliberately, when he had again reflected, ’I should be disposed to urge you to undertake that translation.’

Peak appeared to meditate.

‘Has the book been used by English writers?’ the other inquired.

’A good deal.—­It was published in the sixties, but I read it in a new edition dated a few years ago.  Reusch has kept pace with the men of science.  It would be very interesting to compare the first form of the book with the latest.’

‘It would, very.’

Raising his head from the contemplative posture, Godwin exclaimed, with a laugh of zeal: 

’I think I must find time to translate him.  At all events, I might address a proposal to some likely publisher.  Yet I don’t know how I should assure him of my competency.’

‘Probably a specimen would be the surest testimony.’

‘Yes.  I might do a few chapters.’

Mr. Warricombe’s lapse into silence and brevities intimated to Godwin that it was time to take leave.  He always quitted this room with reluctance.  Its air of luxurious culture affected his senses deliciously, and he hoped that he might some day be permitted to linger among the cabinets and the library shelves.  There were so many books he would have liked to take down, some with titles familiar to him, others which kindled his curiosity when he chanced to observe them.  The library abounded in such works as only a wealthy man can purchase, and Godwin, who had examined some of them at the British Museum, was filled with the humaner kind of envy on seeing them in Mr. Warricombe’s possession.  Those publications of the Palaeontological Society, one volume of which (a part of Davidson’s superb work on the Brachiopoda) even now lay open within sight—­ his hand trembled with a desire to touch them!  And those maps of the Geological Surveys, British and foreign, how he would have enjoyed a day’s poring over them!

He rose, but Martin seemed in no haste to bring the conversation to an end.

‘Have you read M’Naughten’s much-discussed book?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you see the savage attack in The Critical not long ago?’

Godwin smiled, and made quiet answer: 

’I should think it was the last word of scientific bitterness and intolerance.’

‘Scientific?’ repeated Martin, doubtfully.  ’I don’t think the writer was a man of science.  I saw it somewhere attributed to Huxley, but that was preposterous.  To begin with, Huxley would have signed his name; and, again, his English is better.  The article seemed to me to be stamped with literary rancour; it was written by some man who envies M’Naughten’s success.’

Peak kept silence.  Martin’s censure of the anonymous author’s style stung him to the quick, and he had much ado to command his countenance.