CHAPTER X. Gideon Forsyth and the Broadwood Grand

The reader has perhaps read that remarkable work, Who Put Back the

Clock? by E. H. B., which appeared for several days upon the railway

bookstalls and then vanished entirely from the face of the earth.

Whether eating Time makes the chief of his diet out of old editions;

whether Providence has passed a special enactment on behalf of authors;

or whether these last have taken the law into their own hand, bound

themselves into a dark conspiracy with a password, which I would

die rather than reveal, and night after night sally forth under some

vigorous leader, such as Mr James Payn or Mr Walter Besant, on their

task of secret spoliation--certain it is, at least, that the old

editions pass, giving place to new. To the proof, it is believed there

are now only three copies extant of Who Put Back the Clock? one in

the British Museum, successfully concealed by a wrong entry in the

catalogue; another in one of the cellars (the cellar where the music

accumulates) of the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh; and a third, bound

in morocco, in the possession of Gideon Forsyth. To account for the very

different fate attending this third exemplar, the readiest theory is

to suppose that Gideon admired the tale. How to explain that admiration

might appear (to those who have perused the work) more difficult; but

the weakness of a parent is extreme, and Gideon (and not his uncle,

whose initials he had humorously borrowed) was the author of Who Put

Back the Clock? He had never acknowledged it, or only to some intimate

friends while it was still in proof; after its appearance and alarming

failure, the modesty of the novelist had become more pressing, and the

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The Wrong Box