Rainbow Gold Author:David Christie Murray Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER n. At the lower end of Castle Barfield High Street, with but one or two houses between it and the Park wall, stood a house of two stories. Above the w... more »hite-curtained domestic upper windows was painted in blistered and sun-faded letters the legend 'The Stanhope Press.' Below the domestic windows and above the business window the name of ' William Armstrong' went the way of all paint towards final obliteration. There were twenty-one panes of glass in the business window, seven from left to right, and three from top to bottom, and the central pane was illuminated with a device which announced the sale of all patented and family medicines within. When a customer entered at the lowbrowed shop-door, a cracked bell, hung upon a circular spring, rankled behind him until he hadmade his purchase and gone out again, when the closing of the door set it going anew. Books no man in Castle Barfield bought, or desired to buy, grew mildewed on the shelves. Adam Smith was there, and Baxter kept him in dull company. The Works of Sir K. Steele, Now First Collected, might have claimed a more cheerful tomb than this, and The Dramatists of the Seventeenth Century, in thirteen volumes, looked as neglected and forlorn as the strictest moralist could wish them. Various sorts of printing papers, most of them in sad confusion, were piled high upon a back counter, and untidy packets of stationery ware, quill- pens with dusty feathers, cobwebbed ink-bottles, and what not, filled up the shelves which were unoccupied with books. The place had an unprosperous look, and the grey man sitting behind the counter was at least in partial keeping with his surroundings. A casual onlooker could not be supposed to know it, but his head was lined with the contents of the books which lined his untidyshelves. His...« less