Quick as lightning he slid his pencil up his sleeve and turned on me with a fatuous smile.
'What d'ye make o' this, Mr McCaskie?
It's a wee book I picked up at a roup along with fifty others.

I paid five shillings for the lot.

It looks like Gairman, but in my young days they didna teach us foreign languages.' I took the thing and turned over the pages, trying to keep any sign of intelligence out of my face.

It was German right enough, a little manual of hydrography with no publisher's name on it.

It had the look of the kind of textbook a Government department might issue to its officials.
I handed it back.