The blood fled away from the wretch's face, and the skin became gray as
if a shadow of death had passed in the air and fallen on it, and Dyson
caught a choking whisper--

"Mr. Davies! For God's sake, have pity on me, Mr. Davies. On my oath, I
say--" and his voice sank to silence as he heard the message, and strove
in vain to bite his lip; and summon up to his aid some tinge of manhood. He stood there a moment, wavering as the leaves of an aspen, and then he
was gone out into the street, as Dyson thought silently, with his doom
upon his head. He had not been gone a minute when it suddenly flashed
into Dyson's mind that he knew the man; it was undoubtedly the young man
with spectacles for whom so many ingenious persons were searching; the
spectacles indeed were missing, but the pale face, the dark whiskers,
and the timid glances were enough to identify him, Dyson saw at once
that by a succession of hazards he had unawares hit upon the scent of
some desperate conspiracy, wavering as the track of a loathsome snake in
and out of the highways and byways of the London cosmos; the truth was
instantly pictured before him, and he divined that all unconscious and
unheeding he had been privileged to see the shadows of hidden forms,
chasing and hurrying, and grasping and vanishing across the bright
curtain of common life, soundless and silent, or only babbling fables
and pretences. For him in an instant the jargoning of voices, the garish
splendor, and all the vulgar tumult of the public-house became part of
magic; for here before his eyes a scene in this grim mystery play had
been enacted, and he had seen human flesh grow gray with a palsy of
fear; the very hell of cowardice and terror had gaped wide within an
arm's breadth. In the midst of these reflections, the barman came up and
stared at him as if to hint that he had exhausted his right to take his
ease, and Dyson bought another lease of the seat by an order for more
beer. As he pondered the brief glimpse of tragedy, he recollected that
with his first start of haunted fear the young man with whiskers had
drawn his hand swiftly from his great coat pocket, and that he had heard
something fall to the ground; and pretending to have dropped his pipe,
Dyson began to grope in the corner, searching with his fingers. He
touched some thing, and drew it gently to him, and with one brief
glance, as he put it quietly in his pocket, he saw it was a little
old-fashioned note book, bound in faded green morocco. He drank down his beer at a gulp, and left the place, overjoyed at his
fortunate discovery, and busy with conjecture as to the possible
importance of the find. By turns he dreaded to find perhaps mere blank
leaves, or the labored follies of a betting-book, but the faded morocco
cover seemed to promise better things, and hint at mysteries. He piloted
himself with no little difficulty out of the sour and squalid quarter he
had entered with a light heart, and emerging at Gray's Inn Road, struck
off down Guilford Street, and hastened home, only anxious for a lighted
candle and solitude. Dyson sat down at his bureau, and placed the little book before him; it
was an effort to open the leaves and dare disappointment. But in
desperation at last he laid his finger between the pages at haphazard,
and rejoiced to see a compact range of writing with a margin, and as it
chanced, three words caught his glance, and stood out apart from the
mass. Dyson read:

              THE GOLD TIBERIUS,

and his face flushed with fortune and the lust of the hunter. He turned at once to the first leaf of the pocket-book, and proceeded to
read with rapt interest the




HISTORY OF THE YOUNG MAN WITH SPECTACLES


From the filthy and obscure lodging, situated, I verily believe, in one
of the foulest slums of Clerkenwell, I indite this history of a life
which, daily threatened, cannot last for very much longer. Every day,
nay, every hour, I know too well my enemies are drawing their nets
closer about me; even now, I am condemned to be a close prisoner in my
squalid room, and I know that when I go out I shall go to my
destruction. This history, if it chance to fall into good hands, may,
perhaps, be of service in warning young men of the dangers and pitfalls
that most surely must accompany any deviation from the ways of
rectitude. My name is Joseph Walters. When I came of age I found myself in
possession of a small but sufficient income, and I determined that I
would devote my life to scholarship. I do not mean the scholarship of
these days; I had no intention of associating myself with men whose
lives are spent in the unspeakably degrading occupation of "editing"
classics, befouling the fair margins of the fairest books with idle and
superfluous annotation, and doing their utmost to give a lasting
disgust of all that is beautiful. An abbey church turned to the base use
of a stable or a bake-house is a sorry sight; but more pitiable still is
a masterpiece spluttered over with the commentator's pen, and his
hideous mark "cf." For my part I chose the glorious career of scholar in its ancient sense;
I longed to possess encyclopædic learning, to grow old amongst books, to
distil day by day, and year after year, the inmost sweetness of all
worthy writings. I was not rich enough to collect a library, and I was
therefore forced to betake myself to the Reading-Room of the British
Museum. O dim, far-lifted and mighty dome, Mecca of many minds, mausoleum of
many hopes, sad house where all desires fail. For there men enter in
with hearts uplifted, and dreaming minds, seeing in those exalted stairs
a ladder to fame, in that pompous portico the gate of knowledge; and
going in, find but vain vanity, and all but in vain. There, when the
long streets are ringing, is silence, there eternal twilight, and the
odor of heaviness. But there the blood flows thin and cold, and the
brain burns adust; there is the hunt of shadows, and the chase of
embattled phantoms; a striving against ghosts, and a war that has no
victory. O dome, tomb of the quick; surely in thy galleries where no
reverberant voice can call, sighs whisper ever, and mutterings of dead
hopes; and there men's souls mount like moths towards the flame, and
fall scorched and blackened beneath thee, O dim, far-lifted, and mighty
dome. Bitterly do I now regret the day when I took my place at a desk for the
first time, and began my studies. I had not been an habitué of the place
for many months, when I became acquainted with a serene and benevolent
gentleman, a man somewhat past middle age, who nearly always occupied a
desk next to mine. In the Reading-Room it takes little to make an
acquaintance, a casual offer of assistance, a hint as to the search in
the catalogue, and the ordinary politeness of men who constantly sit
near each other; it was thus I came to know the man calling himself Dr.
Lipsius.