Anything shut up in one of those two octavos might stay there a lifetime without Mr.Penhallow's disturbing it; that Master Gridley knew, and of course the young man knew it too.
We often move to the objects of supreme curiosity or desire, not in the lines of castle or bishop on the chess-board, but with the knight's zigzag, at first in the wrong direction, making believe to ourselves we are not after the thing coveted.

Put a lump of sugar in a canary-bird's cage, and the small creature will illustrate the instinct for the benefit of inquirers or sceptics.

Byles Gridley went to the other side of the room and took a volume of Reports from the shelves.

He put it back and took a copy of "Fearne on Contingent Remainders," and looked at that for a moment in an idling way, as if from a sense of having nothing to do.

Then he drew the back of his forefinger along the books on the shelf, as if nothing interested him in them, and strolled to the shelf in front of the desk at which Murray Bradshaw had stood.