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“What is the price of this?” I asked. With magnificent self- control I kept my eyes on the book, but the lovely lady was so long silent that I raised them. To my surprise, I found on her face an expression of alarm and distress. With reluctance, and yet within her voice a certain hopefulness, she said, “Fifty dollars.”

Fifty dollars was a death blow. I had planned to keep the young lady selling books throughout the entire morning, but at fifty dollars a book, I would soon be owing her money. I attempted to gain time.

“It must be very rare!” I said. I was afraid to look at her lest my admiration should give offense, so I pretended to admire the book.

“It is the only one in existence,” said the young lady. “At least, it is the only one for sale! “

We were interrupted by the approach of a tall man who, from his playing the polite host and from his not wearing a hat, I guessed was Mr. Hatchardson himself. He looked from the book in my hand to the lovely lady and said smiling, “Have you lost it?”

The girl did not smile. To her, apparently, it was no laughing matter. “I don’t know–yet,” she said. Her voice was charming, and genuinely troubled.

Mr. Hatchardson, for later I learned it was he, took the book and showed me the title-page.

“This was privately printed in 1830,” he said, “by Captain Noah Briggs. He distributed a hundred presentation copies among his family and friends here in New Bedford. It is a most interesting volume.”

I did not find it so. For even as he spoke the young girl, still with a troubled countenance, glided away. Inwardly I cursed Captain Briggs and associated with him in my curse the polite Mr. Hatchardson. But, at his next words my interest returned. Still smiling, he lowered his voice.

“Miss Briggs, the young lady who just left us,” he said, is the granddaughter of Captain Briggs, and she does not want the book to go out of the family; she wants it for herself.” I interrupted eagerly.

“But it is for sale?” Mr. Hatchardson reluctantly assented.

“Then I will take it,” I said.

Fifty dollars is a great deal of money, but the face of the young lady had been very sad. Besides being sad, had it been aged, plain, and ill-tempered, that I still would have bought the book, is a question I have never determined.

To Mr. Hatchardson, of my purpose to give the book to Miss Briggs, I said nothing. Instead I planned to send it to her anonymously by mail. She would receive it the next morning when I was arriving in New York, and, as she did not know my name, she could not possibly return it. At the post-office I addressed the “Log” to “Miss Briggs, care of Hatchardson’s Bookstore,” and then I returned to the store. I felt I had earned that pleasure. This time, Miss Briggs was in charge of the post-card counter, and as now a post-card was the only thing I could afford to buy, at seeing her there I was doubly pleased. But she was not pleased to see me. Evidently Mr. Hatchardson had told her I had purchased the “Log” and at her loss her very lovely face still showed disappointment. Toward me her manner was distinctly aggrieved.

But of the “Log” I said nothing, and began recklessly purchasing post-cards that pictured the show places of New Bedford. Almost the first one I picked up was labelled “Harbor Castle. Residence of Fletcher Farrell.” I need not say that I studied it intently. According to the post-card, Harbor Castle stood on a rocky point with water on both sides. It was an enormous, wide-spreading structure, as large as a fort. It exuded prosperity, opulence, extravagance, great wealth. I felt suddenly a filial impulse to visit the home of my would-be forefathers.

“Is this place near here?” I asked.