The year eight­een hun­dred and twenty came in on a Sat­urday, in a hard frost; and at eight o’clock in the morn­ing it found Mr. Kinross in Albe­marle Street, where his Tory maga­zine the Albe­marle was pub­lished, as the first of every month had found him since the Warden began; but this time the house did not know why he had come.

Mr. Radcliffe had gone to Bald­win’s, the book­sellers in Pater­noster Row, at Christ­mas, as he had said he would. His name was still over the shop, be­cause the painter had not been told, and his chair was still be­hind the desk in the front of­fice, be­cause the shop­men had not dared to move it; and the half-sheet with the sale on it was handed to Mr. Kinross by Mr. Ogle, the senior shop­man, who had spoken to him per­haps twice in all the months he had been com­ing there.

“Mr. Radcliffe left word, sir,” said Mr. Ogle, “that you were to have this on the first, and that I was not to ask why.” He held it out at arm’s length. “And I have not, sir.”

The Decem­ber num­ber had sold twenty fewer cop­ies than the No­vem­ber. There were let­ters on the desk: three cler­gy­men now, about the kit­chen, and the lady in Clapham, who had writ­ten again about the nurs­ery. Mr. Kinross read them stand­ing, and left them where they lay, for the man who would an­swer them. He had had seven weeks to find that man, and had found that Lon­don was full of men who could man­age a maga­zine, and had not one in it who could man­age a maga­zine and hold his tongue.

The Lud­gate was not on the table.

Mr. Radcliffe had al­ways put it there, on the corner nearest the door, with­out being asked. No one else in the house knew that it was wanted, so it was not there. Mr. Kinross stood for some mo­ments look­ing at the bare corner of the table. Then he went out into Pic­ca­dilly and bought it him­self, at a book­seller’s where he had never once asked for any­thing Whig; and the young man be­hind the counter, who had evid­ently heard of the Lud­gate, handed it across with the face of a man who has been asked by a bishop for gin.

On the back of the wrap­per, in two lines of small type, the Pro­pri­etor begged leave to in­form his read­ers that the Lud­gate would be sus­pen­ded after the present num­ber. Mr. Kinross read the two lines twice. He had never met Mr. Baldock, and had spent a year wish­ing him out of busi­ness. Now that it was done, he did not like it.

He took the maga­zine back to Albe­marle Street, and up to the first floor, where Mr. Radcliffe had given his din­ners to au­thors who might be of use to him. The chairs were in hol­land cov­ers, and the fire was not lit. He sat down in his great­coat, by the cold grate, and read the ninth num­ber of the Mor­timers from the be­gin­ning, be­cause he would not let him­self hunt through it for him­self.

He did not have to look. It was in the fourth chapter.

Mr. Mor­timer stood on the pave­ment out­side his house in Mount Street while his wife went in, and looked down, for the first time in nine num­bers, into his own area, the sunk yard below his rail­ings; and he said to nobody in par­tic­u­lar, in a voice that was not quite his own:

Mr. Kinross had said it him­self, on his own pave­ment, on the fif­teenth of No­vem­ber, to a young woman in men­ded boots who had asked whether any­body in Gros­venor Square ever looked at a rail­ing. He had meant that he had looked at his own be­cause the Mor­timers had made him. And she had taken the words home, and given them to Mr. Mor­timer, ex­actly as he had said them, and Mr. Mor­timer had said them into his area.

She had answered his Warden be­fore. She had answered him in the eighth num­ber, out of the house­keeper’s book; but that had been one book an­swer­ing an­other. This was a woman an­swer­ing a man, in his own words, from his own pave­ment; and she must have writ­ten it, he reckoned, in No­vem­ber, be­fore the turtle and the fish, when she sup­posed him to be noth­ing but a gen­tle­man who had looked at his rail­ings.

He sat for some time with that. Then he went on, be­cause there was

more of the num­ber, and he did not leave a thing un­read for lik­ing one part of it too well.

On the last leaf but one, Miss Mor­timer walked in St. James’s Park with her maid on a Decem­ber morn­ing, to be out of the house while the house­keeper’s book was gone over. The maid had chil­blains, and said so. They came along the water. And then, be­tween the chil­blains and the water, there was a sen­tence that had not been in any num­ber be­fore it:

Mr. Kinross found that he had a pen­cil in his hand. He had been mark­ing the num­ber as he read it, as he marked everything. He put the pen­cil down on the hol­land cover of the chair be­side him, very care­fully, as if it were not his.

He had never in his life marked a maga­zine in St. James’s Park.

He sat in Mr. Radcliffe’s cold draw­ing-room and con­sidered this, as he would have con­sidered a date in one of his boxes that did not agree with the oth­ers. She did noth­ing by ac­ci­dent. She had moved his rail­ings in the sev­enth num­ber be­cause they were in the wrong place, and she had put them, to the inch, where they were. If she had put him in St. James’s Park, there was a reason; and he could think of only one way to find it, which was the way she had found his kit­chen.

He got up, and went down the stairs past Mr. Ogle, who did not ask, and walked down St. James’s Street to the park.

*  *  *  *  *

It was not yet ten, and the park was nearly empty. The frost lay white on the grass, and on the backs of the cows by the Spring Gar­dens gate, where a woman was selling milk warm from them to two nurse­maids and a sol­dier. The long straight water of the canal was frozen along its edges and not yet across; the ducks had crowded to­gether in the open middle of it, com­plain­ing; and three boys on the bank were throw­ing stones on to the ice to see whether it would bear.

Mr. Kinross went along the water until he came to the place where, as near as he could judge, Miss Mor­timer and her maid would have passed a gen­tle­man stand­ing; and he stood there him­self, with the Lud­gate under his arm, and looked about him.

There was noth­ing to see. There were the Horse Guards at one end and Buck­ing­ham House at the other, and the water be­tween, and two other gen­tle­men walk­ing, each with a news­pa­per; and nobody looked at Mr. Kinross, be­cause in St. James’s Park every

gen­tle­man had some­thing to read and nobody had a name.

It was then that he understood her.

She had moved him, as she had moved the rail­ings; but the rail­ings she had moved to where they were, and him to where he was not. She had kept him out of the Temple, where the pen­cil would have been known by the end of the week. She had done for him, in a sen­tence, what he had re­solved on his walk to Temple Bar to do for her; and she could only have done it if she had seen him there.

He stood quite still by the water, and was back in the garden in August: the second bench, the hot gravel, the fourth num­ber of the Mor­timers in his hand; and a step on the gravel, which he had heard with­out look­ing up. It had come down the east­ern walk, and stopped some­where below him for a while, and come back, and passed be­hind his bench. He had been writ­ing com­pet­ent in her mar­gin; and she had walked be­hind him while he wrote it. He would have given a good deal of the Albe­marle to have that af­ter­noon back, and lift his head.

For a mo­ment, read­ing the sen­tence again, he heard the other mean­ing in it, the one a writer would hear: a man who is quite cer­tain that nobody is read­ing him. Then he put it by. She had seen a pen­cil and a maga­zine, and never a ma­nu­script, for he had never taken one into the garden. Radcliffe could have told her the rest, and Radcliffe told nobody any­thing. Wray could have told her whose maga­zine it was, and would tell any­body, for a para­graph; but not who wrote in it, be­cause Wray did not know. She thought him a gen­tle­man who read the Mor­timers with a pen­cil and sup­posed him­self un­ob­served. It was true, and quite bad enough. She did not know that he wrote the Warden. He was sure of it.

He walked a long while in the park after that, by the water and away from it, and could not af­ter­wards have said where; and it was nearly four, with the light going, when he came into the Temple and went straight down to the garden, past the porter’s lodge, where Fig­gis put his head out to tell him that it was a hard frost, as though he had ar­ranged it. The garden was empty. The gravel was frozen, and the river was very low and very bright be­tween the barges, and the Sur­rey shore had gone grey. He went down the east­ern walk to the river wall and stood at it, which in six years he had never done.

From the wall one saw the river. When one turned to go back up the walk, the first thing one saw was the second bench. The step in August had stopped here.

A per­son does not stand at a river wall in August, in the heat, for the sake

of the Sur­rey shore, un­less she has the habit of it. She had come there often, then, and she lived within a walk of it. He had sup­posed since the night of the turtle that she lived east of Temple Bar. He knew now that she lived near enough to the Temple to come into its garden after three, and go home again be­fore any­body missed her. It brought Lon­don down from a mil­lion souls to a few streets; and every one of them, he re­flec­ted, was full.

He would not ask. To ask was to tell. He would take the courts in order, from the Bar east­ward, one at a time and each in its place, as he had taken the years of the fourth Henry; and he would begin on Monday with the north side, be­cause it was on his left hand, and leave the south side, his own side of Fleet Street, for the second week, since it was the side he knew, and she could hardly be liv­ing under his nose. And every af­ter­noon, after three, he would sit on the second bench, be­cause she had come there once, and might again.

*  *  *  *  *

Kit brought the Lud­gate and the Albe­marle home that even­ing from the Temple gate, as he had brought every num­ber since the sum­mer, and read the ninth num­ber of the Mor­timers aloud with his back to the fire.

He read Mr. Mor­timer on his pave­ment with­out stop­ping; for Kit, the line was only Mr. Mor­timer being odd, which he often was. He read Miss Mor­timer in the park, and the maid’s chil­blains, which Lucy said were very like her own; and he read the gen­tle­man by the water, and laughed.

“That’s Pel­ham,” he said, with deep sat­is­fac­tion. “To the life. He marks everything, and nobody reads him.”

“Nobody reads any­thing Pel­ham writes,” said Lucy. “That is why he is so cross.”

Mrs. Lyd­iard, at the cuff of Kit’s other shirt, said that she hoped Mr. Pel­ham did not stand about in St. James’s Park in Decem­ber, at his time of life; and Clem­ency, who had been very still, let her breath go.

He had read it, then, or would read it by to­night. She had known since the sen­tence went to Gedge that he would; she had not known what it would be like to sit in Salis­bury Square on the even­ing he did, and not know what he thought of it. It was like hav­ing pos­ted a let­ter to some­body who would never an­swer, ex­cept that he might.

She read the four­teenth num­ber of the Warden in the back room, when the oth­ers had gone to bed. It was the Marches in snow, and the King’s let­ters, and noth­ing whatever about kit­chens or pen­cils. He had writ­ten it, she reckoned, be­fore he could have seen the ninth num­ber of the Mor­timers; any an­swer to that could not come be­fore

the first of Feb­ru­ary; and she found that she had coun­ted the days.

She had not been to the river wall since the first of Decem­ber.

She had given it up on the night she found out whose pen­cil it was. She had not meant to give it up. She had only found, on the first fine af­ter­noon after that, that she could not walk in at the Inner Temple gate with­out won­der­ing whether he was on his bench; and since she could not go to the wall with­out passing the bench, and could not pass the bench now with­out his know­ing her, if he looked up, for the young per­son from his pave­ment; and once the ninth num­ber was out, he would only have to put the young per­son, the garden and the gen­tle­man with the pen­cil to­gether to know who had writ­ten it. So she had gone home in­stead. She had gone home every af­ter­noon since. It was the one place in Lon­don where nobody had ever wanted any­thing of her, not even a price, and she had not known until she lost it how much of the week she had spent wait­ing to be there.

It was a quarter of a mile. It might as well have been Edin­burgh.

*  *  *  *  *

Mr. Kinross began on the Monday, as he had said he would, at Temple Bar, with the north side.

He went into every court and alley be­tween the Bar and Fet­ter Lane, and then be­tween Fet­ter Lane and Shoe Lane: into courts with a pump in them and courts with a print­ing-press, and one with a tree, which was dying; and up pas­sages so nar­row that he must turn his shoulders to them, which came out into little squares that he had not known were there, with wash­ing across them, frozen stiff. He went in the morn­ings, early, at the hour when the women of a house go out to the baker’s and the pump; and he looked at faces under bon­nets, and at boots, and at the win­dows of lodgings over shops. He did not look in at any door. He asked nobody any­thing.

By the Wed­nes­day three of the courts north of Fleet Street had de­cided among them­selves that he was a bailiff’s man, and a fourth, which knew bet­ter, that he was a gen­tle­man look­ing for a lady who did not wish to be found. This was the truth. A woman in John­son’s Court emp­tied a basin from an upper win­dow so near his hat that he could not sup­pose it to have been an ac­ci­dent.

He did not see her. He had not ex­pec­ted to see her in a week. He had been nine years over the second Richard and the fourth Henry, and was not fin­ished yet.

At three, every af­ter­noon, he went down to the garden and sat on the second bench, with the Albe­marle or the Lud­gate or whatever he had

brought, in a frost that never once broke; and he did not mark it, be­cause he found that he could not hold a pen­cil now with­out feel­ing it looked at. The garden was empty in that weather, ex­cept for the gardener, who swept the walks as if he bore them a grudge, and the law­yers’ clerks who cut through it with their bundles, and did not look at him. One of them, a small boy in a coat too large for him, came through every af­ter­noon at about half past three with a par­cel of en­gross­ments, and stopped by the river wall on his way back, and drew in a little book with a stump of black-lead, with his tongue be­tween his teeth. Mr. Kinross no­ticed him, as he no­ticed everything that week, and did not think about him.

Fig­gis told him, every af­ter­noon at the gate, that he would take his death.

“Very likely,” said Mr. Kinross.

He could have stood in Pater­noster Row at nine on the tenth and seen her come with the num­ber under her cloak. He knew the day, and he knew the door, if she took Radcliffe’s terms; for Radcliffe had told him in No­vem­ber that he meant to take the Mor­timers to Bald­win’s, if he could. At Lord Ash­combe’s table he had kept his lord­ship away from that door by warn­ing him that Mr. Wray would hear of it; and he had not said it only for his lord­ship’s sake. He would not wait for her on a pub­lisher’s stair, like a dun. He would find her at her own door, or not at all.

On the Wed­nes­day there was a let­ter from Edin­burgh. His aunt would come south in the first days of Feb­ru­ary, for the Sea­son, the months when the fash­ion­able world came to town, with Miss Lau­der and Miss Lau­der’s father, who had busi­ness be­fore the Lords; she had heard noth­ing from her nephew since Christ­mas, and took this to mean that there was noth­ing to hear. Mr. Kinross read it on the second bench, in the frost, and put it in his pocket, and went on not mark­ing the Albe­marle.

She did not come, and the reason was sit­ting on the second bench.

*  *  *  *  *

On the Thursday, which was Twelfth Night, the pastry­cooks’ win­dows in Fleet Street were full of cakes that nobody in Salis­bury Square could af­ford. Kit had brought home, in­stead, the first volume of Ivanhoe, which Mr. Pel­ham had bought on the day it came, as every­body had, and had lent to his clerk after a chapter be­cause the Sax­ons made him sleepy; and Kit was read­ing it aloud in the front room, a little each night, be­cause the candles were coun­ted.

He had got to the tour­na­ment. Clem­ency left him there at nine, with the knight who had no name rid­ing into the lists with Desdichado on his shield,

which Kit said was Span­ish for dis­in­her­ited, and took the candle and the scuttle and went down for the coals, which were kept, by ar­range­ment with Mr. Dunning, in the cel­lar under his shop.

There was a boy sit­ting on the stairs below their door, in the dark.

He scrambled up when the light came round the turn, and flattened him­self against the wall; and she knew him, as one knows a per­son one passes on a stair. He was Dunning’s boy. The Dun­nings had taken him from the Found­ling Hos­pital at Michael­mas, bound for seven years, and Mrs. Dunning, who had no chil­dren liv­ing, had told every­body in the Square that he was a good boy and ate next to noth­ing. Clem­ency had nod­ded to him on the stair per­haps twenty times since Oc­to­ber, and he had nod­ded back, and they had neither of them said a word. He was four­teen, she had been told, and might have passed for twelve. He was small and thin and fair, with a quick, anxious face, and a coat bought for him to grow into.

“I beg your par­don, miss,” he said. “I wasn’t listen­ing.”

He had been listen­ing. Kit’s voice came through the door quite plainly; Kit read Ivanhoe as he read the Mor­timers, in the voice he kept for Mr. Pel­ham’s opin­ions, which was meant for a jury and car­ried to the street.

“You’ll take cold,” said Clem­ency.

“Yes, miss.” He did not move. “He’s just come in. The knight. Nobody knows who he is.”

“No,” said Clem­ency. “Nobody does.”

He had a board on his knees, she saw, of the kind the law-sta­tion­ers use to carry a skin of parch­ment with­out creas­ing it; and on the board, held down by his thumb, was a sheet of paper that had been writ­ten on, on the other side, in a fair round hand. She held the candle lower with­out mean­ing to, and he did not snatch it away. He looked at her in­stead, quickly, to see what she would do, as if a great deal de­pended on it.

It was a knight in ar­mour, sit­ting on a garden bench under a bare tree, with a river be­hind him. He had his hel­met off and set on the bench be­side him, and a book open on his knee; and in his right hand, in his steel glove, he held a pen­cil. The ar­mour was all wrong. It had joints where no ar­mour has joints, and none where it has; the boy had plainly never seen a suit of it nearer than a print-shop win­dow. But the face was right. It was a long, plain, guarded face, with noth­ing in it that it had not de­cided to let out; and the boy had seen, as she had seen on the pave­ment, that it was not suc­ceed­ing.

Clem­ency knew the face. She had looked at it for a quarter of an hour

on its own pave­ment in No­vem­ber, and she had seen it shut.

“Who is it?” she said; and she was pleased to hear that her voice was per­fectly or­din­ary.

“It’s the knight that hasn’t got a name, miss. The Dis­in­her­ited.” He touched the edge of the paper. “Only I gave him the gen­tle­man’s face. Off the second bench, in the Temple garden. Because nobody knows his name either.”

“Doesn’t any­body?”

“He doesn’t talk to any­body, miss. He sits there every af­ter­noon now, since New Year’s Day, in the frost, and reads; and Mr. Fig­gis at the gate says he’ll take his death, and he says, very likely.” The boy con­sidered the draw­ing. “I go by him twice a day with Mr. Dunning’s cop­ies for Paper Build­ings. He’s never looked at me. He looks like a knight out of a book.”

Clem­ency did not laugh. It was a near thing.

For he was a knight out of a book; he was the Lord Warden of the Marches, and he wrote the book him­self, by the month, and the boy who had drawn him in his ar­mour did not know it, and never would un­less some­body told him, and nobody would. She stood on the stair with the candle and the empty scuttle, and was so nearly over­come, by laughter or by some­thing next door to it, that she was ob­liged to look at the scuttle very hard.

Every af­ter­noon since New Year’s Day: since the morn­ing the Lud­gate came out. He had read the ninth num­ber, then, on the first; and he had gone back to his bench in a hard frost, every day since, to sit where any passer-by could see him. She thought she understood it. It was a gen­tle­man’s an­swer to being laughed at. He had been told, in print, that he stood about by the water mark­ing maga­zines in the be­lief that nobody saw him; and he had gone and sat where every­body could, to show who­ever had writ­ten it that a man could be laughed at and keep his seat. It was ex­actly what the Warden would have done, and she found it ab­surd, and very af­fect­ing.

There was an­other ex­plan­a­tion, and she priced it, as she priced everything: that he sat there in the frost be­cause he was wait­ing for some­body, and that the some­body was the young per­son from his pave­ment. She marked it down at once. Gen­tle­men of Gros­venor Square did not sit out a Janu­ary in the Temple for a young woman who had come about a place; and she had been sold at seven guineas a num­ber for long enough to know what the mar­ket thought she was worth.

She was quite wrong. He was not sit­ting there to be looked at. He was sit­ting there to look.

“It’s good,” she said. “You’ve got his face.”

He went pink, from the col­lar up.

“I don’t know about ar­mour, miss.”

“Nobody in Lon­don knows about ar­mour. You know about faces. That’s the hard part.”

Under her bed was a port­fo­lio of draw­ings of the Mor­timers, and she had never fin­ished a face in it, be­cause she could never de­cide what a face would look like at the mo­ment it understood. Among them was the garden of the Inner Temple, seen from the river wall, with a gen­tle­man on the bench under the second plane, too small to have a face.

The boy had given him one.

“Who taught you?” she said.

“Nobody, miss.” He thought about it, being hon­est. “There were pic­tures at the Hos­pital. On the stairs, and in the room where the Gov­ernors sat. We went past them every day, to our din­ners; and on Sundays the ladies came to look at them, and at us.” He said it with­out any com­plaint, as he might have said that it had rained. “There was one of Moses, miss, being brought to the lady that found him. It’s his own mother brings him, only she mayn’t say so. We used to look at that one.”

Clem­ency looked at the draw­ing, so as not to look at him.

“What do they call you?”

“Tucker, miss. Tobias Tucker. The Hos­pital gave it me, when I was took in.” He seemed to feel that it wanted some de­fence. “Mrs. Dunning calls me Toby.”

“Then so shall I, if I may.” She looked at the back of the sheet, where the fair round hand ended in the middle of a word. “Does Mr. Dunning know you draw on his paper?”

All the col­our that had come into his face went out of it at once.

“It’s the spoilt ones, miss. Only the spoilt ones. When the clerk blots, or gets a word wrong, it’s spoilt, and it goes for light­ing the fire.” He had both hands on the board now. “I only take them after. I never took a good one.”

She saw, as plainly as she had ever seen a price, what he was afraid of. He had been at Dunning’s a quarter of a year, and nobody had sent him back yet; and he did not know, be­cause nobody had ever told him, that a boy was not sent back to the Hos­pital for draw­ing on paper that was going on the fire.

“I shan’t tell him,” said Clem­ency. “It’s noth­ing to do with me what Mr. Dunning lights his fire with.”

He looked at her for a long mo­ment, to see whether she meant it; and then he be­lieved her, all at once and en­tirely, as she had never seen any­body be­lieve any­thing. It was a little alarm­ing.

“Have you any more?”

He had a book. It was a dozen spoilt sheets, fol­ded and sewn with a thread that had been begged from Mrs. Dunning; and he took it out of his coat and gave it to her, and stood one step below her while she turned it over by the candle, and watched her face and not the book. There was the round church in the Temple, and the old trees in the garden, bare, and the gardener with his broom, scowl­ing at the walk; there was Mr. Fig­gis in the door of his lodge, un­mis­tak­ably Fig­gis; there were two old Bench­ers going in to din­ner, one of them already asleep; and every one of them had a face, and every face was some­body. Near the end of the book, as she turned the leaf, he put out his hand quickly and turned two leaves to­gether, so that she should not see the one be­tween; and then went red, be­cause he knew she had seen him do it.

She did not ask. She knew a good deal about keep­ing things that were not any­body else’s busi­ness. She gave him the book back.

From the foot of the stairs Mrs. Dunning’s voice came up, warm and ex­as­per­ated, like the smell of sup­per.

“Toby! Your sup­per’s spoil­ing, and so are you!”

He was gone be­fore she could say good night. He was down the stair and round the turn with the board under his arm, and then, a mo­ment later, back again, for the scuttle, which she was still hold­ing; and he took it out of her hand with­out a word and went down to the cel­lar with it in the dark, and brought it up full, and set it out­side the Lydiards’ door, and was gone again be­fore she could thank him. Nobody had car­ried coals for her since Bread Street.

When she went in, she did not shut the door. She left it on the jar, a hand’s breadth, and moved her chair next to it, where the draught was, which nobody else wanted. Kit was in the lists still, and the knight with no name had over­thrown the Tem­plar.

“Clem, you’re let­ting the cold in.”

“I’m warm,” said Clem­ency; which, for once, was true.

*  *  *  *  *

On the Sat­urday she walked out to Isling­ton to see Mr. Baldock, be­cause the tenth of Janu­ary was on Monday, and the Author owed Mr. Radcliffe an an­swer by then.

He lived in Canonbury, in a nar­row house with a garden that he had never had time to look at; and he was look­ing at it now, from the win­dow of his par­lour, with his feet on the fender and a book face down on his knee, like a man who has been put out to grass and sus­pects the grass. He was very glad to see her, and said so; and then he took off his spec­tacles, and put them on again, and was brisk.

“I have read a novel,” he said. “Every­body has; I was told I should. It is very long, and very fine, and there are a great many knights in it, and a tour­na­ment, and a siege; and the only man in the whole of it who ex­pects to be paid is the moneylender, and the knights treat him ab­om­in­ably for ask­ing.” He shut the book. “I sup­pose that is what is meant by ro­mance. You have come about Radcliffe.”

“The Author must an­swer him by Monday.”

“Then the Author will go to him.” He said it at once, as he gave the price of paper. “There is noth­ing else to be done, and you know it, or you would not have walked out to Canonbury in a frost to be told so. I have no shop. I shall not have one be­fore Lady Day, and very likely not after it. Radcliffe pays twelve guineas, on the tenth, on de­liv­ery; the Lon­don, Bald­win’s new maga­zine, will be read by every­body who reads, which is more than ever read the Lud­gate; and he does not ask your name. Go to him.”

Clem­ency looked at the fire.

“Mr. Radcliffe pub­lished the Warden,” she said, “from the first num­ber.”

“He did. And he has kept the name of the man who writes it from the whole of Lon­don, from the first num­ber until now; and he dines out on not telling it, which is the surest sign I know that he never will.” Mr. Baldock re­garded her over the spec­tacles. “If you want a secret kept, Miss Lyd­iard, give it to a man who is proud of keep­ing one. I have known Radcliffe five-and-twenty years. He has never yet told any­body any­thing that he could sell for more by keep­ing.”

She did not say that she knew the name her­self; that she had known it for five weeks, and had found out what it cost to keep it every day of them, and so knew bet­ter than any­body in Lon­don what Mr. Radcliffe had been doing for a year. She said noth­ing. But it was that, more than the twelve guineas, which de­cided her.

“There is one other thing,” said Mr. Baldock, “and then I have done. Hindley came here on Christ­mas Eve.”

She turned round. She had heard Mr. Hindley once, in Oc­to­ber, through a door that did not shut, selling her to Mr. Baldock; she had never seen his face.

“In a new coat. He wished to know who de­liv­ers the Mor­timers. Not who writes them: he could hardly ask me that, since half the Row be­lieves he does. Who comes up the stairs on the tenth.” Mr. Baldock’s face did not change at all. “I told him that I was a plain man too, and that plain men did not tell each other things. He went away in a very bad tem­per, and did not pay his hack­ney-coach­man, who came

back and asked me for it. I paid him. It is the last money I shall lay out on the Mor­timers, and I grudged it more than all the rest.” He took off his spec­tacles again. “Some­body has given Mr. Hindley a reason to look. I do not know who. Go to Radcliffe early, and take the num­ber under your cloak.”

When she rose to go he got up too, which he never did, and went with her to the door, and stood on the step in the frost with­out his hat.

“I had the best thing I ever pub­lished,” he said, “for seven guineas a num­ber. I shall be ashamed of that until I die. It was the price I could pay, and you took it, and I let you.” He held out his hand. “Go to Radcliffe, Miss Lyd­iard. He will pay you bet­ter, and he will not de­serve it either.”

*  *  *  *  *

Pater­noster Row at nine o’clock on a Monday morn­ing in Janu­ary was as dark as most streets at dusk: a lane of book­sellers so nar­row that the houses on either side might have read each other’s titles, and the dome of St. Paul’s stand­ing up be­hind them in the frost. Bald­win’s was at num­ber forty-seven. A few doors along, at the corner of Chapter House Court, was the Chapter Cof­fee-house, where the trade drank its cof­fee and sold its secrets; and in the door­way of the Chapter stood a tall man, stamp­ing his feet.

Clem­ency priced him from the boots up, be­cause she could not help it.

The boots had been soled twice, and the coat was new. He had spent on his back what he had saved on his feet. He was watch­ing the door of num­ber forty-seven as a cat watches a hole in the wains­cot; and he looked at her as she went by him, and away again at once, with­out in­terest, be­cause she was a woman, and he was wait­ing for the Author.

She went up Bald­win’s stairs with the tenth num­ber under her cloak.

Mr. Radcliffe re­ceived her in a small front room on the first floor, with a fire in it and a press, and a win­dow on to the Row; and he rose when she came in. He was a large, pale, care­ful man, with an Edin­burgh voice that Lon­don had not quite flattened; and he looked at her once, from her bon­net to her boots, as a book­seller looks at a bind­ing, and then at her face, and then did not look at her again in any way that she could ob­ject to.

“The Author of the Mor­timers,” he said, in the voice in which he gave a price.

“The Author has sent the tenth num­ber,” said Clem­ency, “by hand.”

“By the only hand that could, I think.” He took the num­ber from her and weighed it, as Mr. Baldock had al­ways weighed it; and then he did a thing that Mr. Baldock had never done,

and read the first leaf through at the win­dow, on his feet, for the price. She watched him do it. It was like watch­ing some­body count her change.

“Yes,” said Mr. Radcliffe, at the foot of the leaf. He put it down. “I read the ninth on the first. Stand­ing up, which I do not do.” He un­locked a drawer. “Twelve guineas. I am told that there is a form of words.”

“Mr. Baldock used to say, To the Author, on de­liv­ery.”

“Then I shall say it.” He coun­ted it out on the table, a ten-pound note and two sov­er­eigns and twelve shil­lings, ex­actly as Mr. Baldock had coun­ted it out all the au­tumn; and he did not ask her to count it after him, and she did not. “To the Author, on de­liv­ery. You will find, madam, that I keep to the terms. Twelve guineas, no name, the tenth of every month; and the Author does not dine. I have un­der­lined it. I have never in five-and-twenty years had a con­trib­utor who would not dine, and I find I like it bet­ter than I ex­pec­ted.”

“And the Author’s name?”

“I do not ask for what I do not need,” said Mr. Radcliffe. “I should only have to keep it.” He locked the drawer. “And now I shall tell you a thing that is not in the terms, and you may do as you like about it. There is a man in the door of the Chapter.”

“In a new coat,” said Clem­ency.

“And not paid for.” Mr. Radcliffe did not smile; he seemed not to have the habit. “His name is Hindley. He is a Man­chester man, and in town he does not rise be­fore ten; I have dined with him, and I know. He has been in that door­way since eight, and he has drunk three dishes of the Chapter’s cof­fee, which is a thing I have never seen done; and he is not read­ing the news­pa­per. He is watch­ing my door, on the tenth of the month, at nine in the morn­ing.” He looked at her across the table. “He will be watch­ing it when you go out.”

Clem­ency stood quite still, with the twelve guineas in her glove. She had walked past him a minute ago, and he had looked at her, and away.

“He did not know me,” she said.

“No. He is watch­ing for a man,” said Mr. Radcliffe. “The whole of the Row has been look­ing for a man since Oc­to­ber, be­cause Mr. Hindley let it think it had found one; and he has come to be­lieve it him­self.” He went to a door at the back of the room, which she had taken for a cup­board, and opened it on a nar­row stair that went down into the dark and smelt of paper. “It is a com­mon fail­ing in the trade, madam, to look for what one has been selling. This stair goes down through the ware­house, and comes out in a court be­hind the Row. I should go that way this month; and next month,

if you will allow me, I will see that the Chapter has some­thing else to look at.”

She went to the door. Then, be­cause he had kept the terms, and be­cause she had never in her life been given any­thing for noth­ing with­out ask­ing why, she turned on the top step.

“Mr. Radcliffe. Why?”

He con­sidered the ques­tion as he had con­sidered the first leaf: hon­estly, and for the price.

“Because the Author’s ninth was worth the twelve,” he said. “And be­cause I have been keep­ing one name in this trade for a year, madam, and have found that it is a thing a man gets the taste for.”

She went down through the ware­house in the dark, be­tween stacks of paper higher than her head, and came out into a court she did not know, and found her way by the dome, and walked home by Lud­gate Hill with twelve guineas in her glove, which was a quarter’s rent and the coals, and no one in the world be­hind her.

Mr. Radcliffe stood at his win­dow after she had gone, and watched Mr. Hindley stamp his feet in the door of the Chapter. He did not know her name, and did not mean to. He knew her face now, and her voice, and her boots, which had been men­ded at the toe; and he thought, with­out wish­ing to, of a sen­tence in the ninth num­ber about a gen­tle­man by the water, and of the only man he had ever known who marked a maga­zine in pen­cil.

Then he put the thought where he put everything, and locked it, and went down to the shop to see about the Feb­ru­ary num­ber.

*  *  *  *  *

On the Monday night Kit came to the end of the tour­na­ment.

The knight with no name had won the second day, as every­body had known he would; and they brought him be­fore the Lady Rowena to be crowned, and the mar­shals un­laced his hel­met; and he was a young man, very pale, with blood on his face, and the whole of the lists knew him. He was Ivanhoe. He fell down at her feet.

“There!” said Lucy, en­chanted. “I knew it was him from the first chapter.”

“So did every­body,” said Clem­ency. “That is the pleas­ure of it.”

“Then what is the use of the hel­met?” said Kit, who had not known, and was put out.

“To make the people in the book wait,” said Clem­ency, “while every­body else en­joys them­selves.”

Mrs. Lyd­iard looked at her elder daugh­ter, and then at the door, and said noth­ing.

The door to the stair stood on the jar, where Clem­ency had left it. Bey­ond it, on the dark stair, some­body very small let out a breath that he

had been hold­ing since the mar­shals touched the hel­met.

Clem­ency sat with her hands in her lap and thought about knights.

She knew the name of hers. She had known it since the first of Decem­ber, and it had been no use to her at all; for it is one thing to know the knight’s name from the first chapter, with a book on one’s knee, and quite an­other to know it from the lists. He sat every af­ter­noon now on the second bench, a quarter of a mile away, in a hard frost, with his hel­met off, to show that he did not mind being looked at; and she could not go and look.

(To be con­tin­ued.)