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50 LILITH
my visitor should remember Sir Upward, than that he should have been my great-grandfather's librarian !
'I owe him much,' he continued; 'for, although I had read many more books than he, yet, through the special direction of his studies, he was able to inform me of a certain relation of modes which I should never have discovered of myself, and could hardly have learned from any one else.'
' Would you mind telling me all about that ? ' I said.
'By no means—as much at least as I am able : there are not such things as wilful secrets,' he answered—and went on.t
' That closet held his library—a hundred manuscripts or so, for printing was not then invented. One morning I sat there, working at a catalogue of them, when he looked in at the door, and said, " Come." I laid down my pen and followed him—across the great hall, down a steep rough descent, and along an underground passage to a tower he had lately built, consisting of a stair and a room at the top of it. The door of this room had a tremendous lock, which he undid with the smallest key I ever saw. I had scarcely crossed the threshold after him, when, to my eyes, he began to dwindle, and grew less and less. A11 at once my vision seemed to come right, and I saw that he was moving swiftly away from me. In a minute more he was the merest speck in the distance, with the tops of blue mountains beyond him, clear against a sky of paler blue. I recognised the country, fori had gone there and come again many a time, although I had never known this way to it.
' Many years after, when the tower had long disappeared, I taught one of his descendants what Sir Upward had taught me ; and now and then to this day |
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