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The birds roost as willingly among the Corinthian capitals as in the crannies of the crag; the same atmosphere and daylight close the eternal rock and yesterday's imitation portico; and as the soft northern sunshine throws out everything into a glorified distinctness or easterly mists, coming up with the blue evening, fuse all these incongruous features into one, and the lamps begin to glitter along the street, and faint lights to burn in the high windows across the valley the feeling grows upon you that this also is a piece of nature in the most intimate sense; that this profusion of eccentricities, this dream in masonry and living rock, is not a drop-scene in a theatre, but a city in the world of every-day reality, connected by railway and telegraph-wire with all the capitals of Europe, and inhabited by citizens of the familiar type, who keep ledgers, and attend church, and have sold their immortal portion to a daily paper.
Passing through an outer office, where a number of young men were bending over ledgers, they entered Cyrus's private room, and sat down in two plain pine chairs under the coloured lithograph of an engine which ornamented the largest space on the wall. The room was bare of the most ordinary comforts, as though its owner begrudged the few dollars he must spend to improve his surroundings.
They wrote in the ledgers, and on the membership-cards, in a hand astoundingly regular and discreetly flourished; the pages of the ledgers had the mystic charm of ancient manuscripts, and the finality of decrees of fate.
Faaborg was arrested; an examination of his ledgers showed that for years he had been waxing rich at his master's expense, and he had to pay with his life the penalty of his fraud and his unproved testimony. But Faaborg, though thus removed from his path, was by no means done with.
"Take care how you disparage mercantile pursuits; some of the most masterly minds of the age were nurtured in the midst of ledgers." "And I honor and reverence all such far more than their colleagues whose wisdom was culled in classic academic halls; for the former, struggling amid adverse circumstances, made good their claim to an exalted place in the temple of Fame.
When he had once more descended to his office, he again took it out and examined it carefully to see that it had in no way been tampered with; then, with a hard, cruel smile, he placed it upon his desk among his ledgers and account books.
But when he was going to open it with his private key, he made the disquieting discovery that another key was already in the lock. Some one was in the room! But his papers and ledgers were all there, and no one had any business inside. Who could the intruder be? He pulled the door open angrily and went in, and now it was his turn to be startled.
They sat down at the table, the accountant in the centre, Farintosh on the right, and Frank on the left. There was no talk save an occasional abrupt question and answer. For two hours the swish and rustle of the great blue pages of the ledgers were the chief sound, with the scratching of Mr. Wingfield's pen as he totalled up long columns of figures.
Malcolm walked rapidly to the door and opened it; as he did so, a look of surprise and pleasure crossed his face at the sight of a handsome, fair-haired youth, lying back on his easy-chair, with his feet resting on a pile of ledgers. "Hallo, Cedric!" he exclaimed in a cordial tone. "What on earth has brought you up to town on the hottest day of the year?
It was dark and deserted, yet with the lanterns we could see the floor of the largest room littered with torn books and ledgers. Kennedy caught his foot in something. It was a loose wire on the floor. He followed it. It led to an electric-light socket, where it was attached. "Can't you turn on the lights?" shouted McCormick to the watchman. "Not here.
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