The timid man came into the shop hopeful of a bargain.
"It is a useful book, I should think," said Franklin, as if holding himself in restraint.
He took the two other volumes that Father Humphrey had brought him and began to look them over.
"Father Humphrey, what do you want for the whole library of the pamphlets?"
"I do not exactly know what price to fix upon them. They might be valuable to an antiquarian some day, perhaps to some solicitor, or to a library. I would be glad to sell them to you, for somehow—and I speak out of my heart, and use no trade language—somehow I want you to buy them. Would five pounds be too much for the thirty volumes?"
"No, no. There are but few that would want them or give them room. I will pay you five pounds for them. I will take one volume away, but for the present you shall keep the others for me."
He left the store. It was a bright day. Happy faces passed him, but he saw them not. He walked, indeed, the streets of London, but it was the Boston of his childhood that was with him now. He wondered at what he had found—he wondered if there were mysterious influences behind life; for he was certain that these pamphlets were those that his godfather Uncle Benjamin had so valued as a part of himself, and that the notes on the margin of the leaves were in the handwriting of the same kind-hearted man whose influence had so molded his young life.
He went to his apartments, and sat down at his table and read the pamphlet and the notes. He found in the notes the very thoughts and the same expressions of thought that he had received from Uncle Benjamin in his childhood.
What a life had been his, and how much he owed to this honest, pure-minded old man!
He started up.