THE: COURTSHIP OF MORRICE BUCKLER: CHAPTER I.: TELLS OF AN INTERRUPTED MESSAGE.

IT CHANCED THAT AS I was shifting the volumes in my library this morning, more from sheer fatigue of idleness than with any set intention—for, alas! this long time since I have lost the savour of books—a little Elzevir copy of Horace fell from the back of a shelf between my hands. It lay in my palm, soiled and faded with the dust of twenty years; and as I swept clean its cover and the edges of the leaves, the look and feel of it unlocked my mind to such an inrush of glistening memories that I seemed to be sweeping those years and the overlay of their experience from off my consciousness. I lived again in that brief but eventful period which laid upon the unaccustomed shoulders of a bookish student a heavy burden of deeds, but gave