The sudden jerk, as it pulled up, had detached an enormous drop of ink from the point of the pen, and that drop--Ah! I can see him yet, as he rose from the shadow of the desk, that small, white-haired man, so thin and so very angry! "Clumsy idiot! To blot an Early Text!" I leaned over and looked.

Upon the page of folio, close to an illuminated capital, the black drop had flattened itself.

Around the original sphere had been shed splashes of all conceivable shapes-rays, rockets, dotted lines, arrowheads, all the freakish impromptu of chaos.
Next, the slope lending its aid, the channels had drained into one, and by this time a black rivulet was crawling downward to the margin.

One or two readers near had risen, and now eyed me like examining magistrates.
I waited for an outbreak, motionless, dazed, muttering words that did not mend the case at all.

"What a pity! Oh, I'm so sorry! If I had only known--" The student of the Early Text stood motionless as I.Together we watched the ink trickle.