"Why, sir," she had begun to say, looking up in his face. Then suddenly she gave a start. Surely she had seen that face before! But where? Yet almost in a shorter time than I have taken to tell it, she recognized the owner of the papers. He was certainly no other than Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, the famous Autocrat of the Breakfast table, several of whose poems she knew almost by heart. All her old shyness came back to her, she did not exactly dare to say that she recognized him, and all she could think of was another question in relation to the manuscript. "Were--were they some of your own poems?" she managed to stammer, "it would have been dreadful if they had been lost."