Read "A Shadowed Love" by Fred M. White online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Three candles in a silver branch sufficed to make a spot of light in the dingy sitting-room where Martlett spent his evenings. Half buried in an armchair, he was poring over some old black-letter manuscript, the text of which puzzled him. Next to his delight in finding things out, Martlett most liked to be puzzled.
He had been digging at intricate cases until he was as rusty as a village sexton, and yet, after all these years of delving and burrowing into the old manuscripts and old deeds, the keenness of his clear eyes was not dimmed in the slightest. He was beaten for the moment now; he placed the book on his knee to think the matter out.