the Free Library!”

He passed into the interior of the building and proceeded to efface himself behind a newspaper-stand in a draughty, ill-lit corner.

Miss Poskett, seating herself at the table nearest the fire, selected a magazine. This, Mr. Clark felt sure, was but a ruse, for every time that the swing-door opened the girl raised her head expectantly, and then glanced up at the big clock before returning her attention to the magazine.

Half an hour passed—an hour. Mr. Clark, prevented from the solace of tobacco by imperative notices, found the time dragging most tediously. His legs had begun to ache with the strain of standing and he felt chilled, and savage; but he did not dare to risk discovery by moving to more comfortable quarters. Another thirty minutes crept by, and a new and exquisite agony had come to Mr. Clark, for he was thinking now of the many snug inns with which the town abounded, and picturing the enjoyment of Messrs. Tridge and Lock in some such paradise at that moment.

Another forty minutes lagged painfully past. The janitor of the library began a sonorous locking-up in p. 42adjacent apartments, and still Miss Poskett remained to divide her attention between the swing-door, the clock, and the magazine.

p. 42

“Closing time, please!” pronounced the janitor, entering.

Miss Poskett, springing readily to her feet, quitted the edifice. Mr. Clark, one vast sensation of numb passion, followed more slowly after her.

Miss Poskett, looking neither to the right nor the left, walked briskly back to her abode; and again Mr. Clark fancied that he heard a gurgle of malicious satisfaction as the girl entered the Posketts’ household and closed the door after her.

So furious was Mr. Clark that late as was the hour, he stamped round to Fore Street and knocked at the door of Mr. Dobb’s little shop. The house was in darkness, but after Mr. Clark’s third thunderous assault on the panels, an upper window opened and the head of Mr. Dobb, crowned with so obsolete a thing as a nightcap, protruded in inquiry.

“Finished, me!” roared Mr. Clark, to this apparition.

“Don’t you be a silly old stoopid!” counselled Mr. Dobb. “You stick to your job like a man!”

“But it ain’t a man’s job!” declared Mr. Clark. “Sneaking about, 

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