There was an array of pudgy little books, with stout leather backs and stained edges, upon a shelf quite low in the case. Anthony stooped, took one out, and opened it. The eyes of Charles sparkled.
"Voyages!" said he. "That one, I'll wager, is Bartholomew Diaz; how often I've sailed with him as a boy through the pages of that book, to the mouth of the Great Fish River. And there is fine old Vasco da Gama! Many a summer afternoon he and I have doubled the cape, put the complaining pilots in irons, and thrown their quadrants into the sea. And Columbus, and Cabot, and the Merchant Adventurers' Company. There's a rank and file for you, if you want actual deeds and fine accomplishment; Hawkins, Drake, Davis, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and that never-beaten Yorkshireman, Martin Frobisher—"
"What are these?" asked Anthony.
At the bottom of the bookcase, stacked one upon the other, was an array of huge volumes, strong-looking and clean, and each with a number marked upon the leather back, in ink.
"More voyages," smiled Charles. "More expeditions, traffickings, and discoveries. But they are quite modern. In those a patient reader would find a complete record of the doings of Rufus Stevens' Sons, set down from the beginning."
Again Anthony thought of Tom Horn, but now in a new way. Again he saw him, with the successors of these same books before him on the tall desk, and heard him repeat, with an odd significance appearing in the words for the first time:
"The accumulated findings of many men are already written down. If you desire to make plain what's keenest in your mind, go to books, study them diligently, study many of them. It will cost you but the price of lamp-oil, or so many candles, and the use of some winter nights that you might otherwise throw away."
Anthony carried one of the big volumes to the table and opened it under the light. It was kept in a fine, flowing hand, in very black ink and with its rulings perfectly done.
"That's one of old Carberry's," said Charles. "A fine old fellow. He was before Tom Horn. Before him was Lucas, and before Lucas was Parker, a young Quaker who went into a business of his own. Mason had the books while your father was still with us, but there were two or three others between Mason and Parker."
Anthony gave him an odd look.