He looked along the line of shelves and presently took a book down and opened it. He turned over its leaves until something arrested his attention, and then he fell to reading. He read several minutes, while Tembarom watched him. The silence was broken by his laughing a little.
“Listen to this,” he said, and began to read something in a language totally unknown to his hearer. “A man who writes that sort of thing about a woman is an old bounder, whether he’s a poet or not. There’s a small, biting spitefulness about it that’s cattish.”
“_Who_ did it?” Tembarom inquired softly. It might be a good idea to lead him on.
“Horace. In spite of his genius, the ‘Lampoons’ make you feel he was rather a blackguard.”
“Horace!” For the moment T. Tembarom forgot himself. “I always heard he was a sort of Y. M. C. A. old guy--old Horace Greeley. The ‘Tribune’ was no yellow journal when he had it.”
He was sorry he had spoken the next moment. Strangeways looked puzzled.
“The ’Tribune,’” he hesitated. “The Roman tribune?”
“No, New York. He started it--old Horace did. But perhaps we’re not talking of the same man.”
“No, I think we’re not,” he answered politely.
“I’ve made a break,” thought Tembarom. “I ought to have kept my mouth shut. I must try to switch him back.”
Strangeways was looking down at the back of the book he held in his hand.
“This one was the Latin poet, Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65 ~B.C.~ You know it,” he said.
“Oh, _that_ one!” exclaimed Tembarom, as if with an air of immense relief. “What a fool I was to forget! I’m glad it’s him. Will you go on reading, and let me hear some more? He’s a winner from Winnersville, that Horace is.”
Perhaps it was a sort of miracle, accomplished by his great desire to help the right thing to happen, to stave off any shadow of the wrong thing. Whatsoever the reason, Strangeways waited only a moment before turning to his book again. It seemed to be a link in some chain slowly forming itself to draw him back from his wanderings. And T. Tembarom, lightly sweating as a frightened horse will, sat smoking another pipe and listening intently to “Satires” and “Lampoons,” read aloud in the Latin of 65 ~B.C.~
“By gee!” he said faithfully, at intervals, when he saw on the reader’s face that the moment was ripe, “He knew it all,--old Horace,--didn’t he?”