"Algebras and Ollendorff's, I suppose," whispered Sir Within; and she smiled and went on:
"In despair at not finding a purchaser, and pinched by the cold of the long winter's nights, he used to bring an armful of them every night into his room to make his fire. He had not, naturally, much taste for books or learning, but it grieved him sorely to do this; he felt it like a sort of sacrilege, but he felt the piercing cold more, and so he gave in. Well, one night, as he brought in his store, and was turning over the leaves--which he always did before setting fire to them--he came upon a little square volume, with the strangest letters ever he saw; they looked like letters upside down, and gone mad, and some of them were red, and some black, and some golden, and between every page of print there was a sheet of white paper without anything on it. O'Moore examined it well, and at last concluded it must have been some old monkish chronicle, and that the blank pages were left for commentaries on it. At all events, it could have no interest for him, as he couldn't read it, and so he put it down on the hearth till he wanted it to burn.
"It was close on midnight, and nothing but a few dying embers were on the hearth, and no other light in the dreary room, when he took up the old chronicle, and tearing it in two, threw one half on the fire.
The moment he did so the flame sprang up bright as silver, lighting up the whole room, so that he could see even the old cobwebs on the ceiling, that had not been seen for yean and years, and at the same time a delicious music filled the air, and the sounds of children's voices singing beautifully; but, strangest of all, in the very middle of the bright fire that now filled the whole hearth, there sat a little man with a scarlet cloak on him, and a scarlet hat and a white feather in it, and he smiled very graciously at O'Moore, and beckoned him over to him, but O'Moore was so frightened and so overcome he couldn't stir. At last, as the flames got lower, the Tittle man's gestures grew more energetic, and O' Moore crept down on his knees, and said, "'Do you want anything with me, Sir?'"
"'Yes, Garret,' said the little man,: 'I want to be your friend, and to save you from ruin like the rest of your family. You were wrong to burn that book.'