A great many years before, when I was a yearling of tremendous plans, I had set about one of those glorious novels that one plans--a splendid thing with Old Noll as the hero or the heavy father.

I had haunted the bookstalls in search of local colour and had wonderfully well invested my half-crowns.

Thus a company of seventeenth century tracts, dog-eared, coverless, but very glorious under their dust, accompany me through life.

One parts last with those relics of a golden age, and during my late convalescence I had reread many of them, the arbitrary half-remembered phrases suggesting all sorts of scenes--lamplight in squalid streets, trays full of weather-beaten books.

So, even then, my mind was full of Mercurius Rusticus.