as that of the author of a row of volumes labelled Oldys’s Works, which occupy a place that must be honoured, since it is so rarely touched, upon the shelves of many a substantial library.
Dr. Oldys, his niece, and his servants took some months to transfer furniture and books from his Dorsetshire parsonage to the quadrangle of Whitminster, and to get everything into place. But eventually the work was done, and the house (which, though untenanted, had always been kept sound and weather-tight) woke up, and like Monte Cristo’s mansion at Auteuil, lived, sang, and bloomed once more. On a certain morning in June it looked especially fair, as Dr. Oldys strolled in his garden before breakfast and gazed over the red roof at the minster tower with its four gold vanes, backed by a very blue sky, and very white little clouds.
‘Mary,’ he said, as he seated himself at the breakfast table and laid down something hard and shiny on the cloth, ‘here’s a find which the boy made just now. You’ll be sharper than I if you can guess what it’s meant for.’ It was a round and perfectly smooth tablet—as much as an inch thick—of what seemed clear glass. ‘It is rather attractive at all events,’ said Mary:
