The man who had made it, some time in the last century, had intended it to be a locked guardian for domestic documents, and the receptacle for all that was most private in the house of some paterfamilias.

But beneath the hands of Mr.Crawley it always stood open; and with the exception of the small space at which he wrote, was covered with dog's-eared books, from nearly all of which the covers had disappeared.

There were there two odd volumes of Euripides, a Greek Testament, an Odyssey, a duodecimo Pindar, and a miniature Anacreon.

There was half a Horace,--the two first books of the Odes at the beginning, and the De Arte Poetica at the end having disappeared.

There was a little bit of a volume of Cicero, and there were Caesar's Commentaries, in two volumes, so stoutly bound that they had defied the combined ill-usage of time and the Crawley family.