And then, more than once, or twice either, the thought of suicide crossed me; and I turned it over, and looked at it, and dallied with it, as a last chance in reserve. And then the thought of Lillian came, and drove away the fiend. And then the thought of my cousin came, and paralyzed me again; for it told me that one hope was impossible. And then some fresh instance of misery or oppression forced itself upon me, and made me feel the awful sacredness of my calling, as a champion of the poor, and the base cowardice of deserting them for any selfish love of rest. And then I recollected how I had betrayed my suffering brothers. How, for the sake of vanity and patronage, I had consented to hide the truth about their rights-their wrongs. And so on, through weary weeks of moping melancholy-" a doubleminded man, unstable in all his ways!"

At last, Mackaye, who, as I found afterward, had been watching all along my altered mood, contrived to worm my secret out of me. I had dreaded, that whole autumn, having to tell him the truth, because I knew that his first impulse would be to pay the money instantly out of his own pocket; and my pride, as well as my sense of justice, revolted at that, and sealed my lips. But now this fresh discovery-the knowledge that it was not only in my cousin's power to crush me, but also his interest to do so-had utterly unmanned me; and, after a little innocent and fruitless prevarication, out came the truth, with tears of bitter shame.

The old man pursed up his lips, and, without answering me, opened his table drawer, and commenced fumbling among accounts and papers.

"No! no! no! best, noblest of friends! I will not burden you with the fruits of my own vanity and extravagance. I will starve, go to jail, sooner than take your money. If you offer it me, I will leave the house, bag and baggage, this moment." And I rose to put my threat into execution.

'I havena at present ony sic intention," answered he, deliberately; seeing that there's na necessity for paying debits twice ower, when ye ha' the stampt receipt for them." And he put into my hands, to my astonishment and rapture, a receipt in full for the money, signed by my cousin.

Not daring to believe my own eyes, I turned it over and over, looked at it, looked at him-there was nothing but clear, smiling-assurance in his beloved old face, as he twinkled, and winked, and chuckled, and pulled off his spectacles, and wiped them, and put them on upside-down; and then relieved him

K

self by rushing at his pipe, and cramming it fiercely with tobacco till he burst the bowl.

Yes, it was no dream!-the money was paid, and I was free! The sudden relief was as intolerable as the long burden had been; and, like a prisoner suddenly loosed from off the rack, my whole spirit seemed to collapse, and I sunk with my head upon the table, too faint even for gratitude.

But who was my benefactor? Mackaye vouchsafed no answer, but that I "suld ken better than he." But when he found that I was really utterly at a loss to whom to attribute the mercy, he assured me, by way of comfort, that he was just as ignorant as myself; and at last, piecemeal, in his circumlocutory and cautious Scotch method, informed me, that some six weeks back he had received an anonymous letter, "a'thegither o' a Belgravian cast o' phizog," containing a bank-note for twenty pounds, and setting forth the writer's suspicions that I owed my cousin money, and their desire that Mr. Mackaye "o' whose uprightness an' generosity they were pleased to confess themselves no that ignorant," should write to George, ascertain the sum, and pay it without my knowledge, handing over the balance, if any, to me, when he thought fit" Sae there's the remnant-aucht pounds, sax shillings, an' saxpence; tippence being deduckit for expense o' twa letters, anent the same transaction."

But what sort of hand-writing was it?" asked I, almost disregarding the welcome coin.

Ou, then-aiblins a man's, aiblins a maid's. He was na chirographosophic himsel'-an' he had na curiosity anent ony passages o' aristocratic romance."

sic

'But what was the post-mark of the letter?"

Why for suld I ha' speired? Gin the writers had been minded to be beknown, they'd ha' sign't their names upon the document. An' gin they didna sae intend, wad it be coorteous o' me to gang speiring an' peering ower covers an' seals?"

But where is the cover?'

Ou, then," he went on, with the same provoking coolness, "white paper's o' geyan use, in various operations o' the domestic economy. Sae I just tare it up-aiblins for pipe

lights-I canna mind at this time."

"And why-" asked I, more vexed and disappointed than I liked to confess" why did you not tell me before?"

“How would I ken that you had need o't? An' verily, I

thocht it no that bad a lesson for ye, to let the experiment a towmond mair on the precious balms that break the head— whereby I opine the psalmist was minded to denote the delights o' spending borrowed siller."

There was nothing more to be extracted from him; so I was fain to set to work again (a pleasant compulsion truly) with a free heart, eight pounds in my pocket, and a brainful of conjectures. Was it the dean? Lord Lynedale? or was it could it be-Lillian herself? That thought was so delicious, that I made up my mind, as I had free choice among half-a-dozen equally improbable fancies, to determine that the most pleasant should be the true one; and I hoarded the money, which I shrunk from spending as much as I should from selling her minature or a lock of her beloved golden hair. They were a gift from her-a pledge-the first fruits of-I dared not confess to myself what.

Whereat the reader will smile, and say, not without reason, that I was fast fitting myself for Bedlam; if indeed, I had not proved my fitness for it already, by paying the tailors' debts, instead of my own, with the ten pounds which Farmer Porter had given me. I am not sure that he would not be correct, but so I did, and so I suffered.

CHAPTER XXV.

A TRUE NOBLEMAN.

At last my list of subscribers was completed, and my poems actually in the press. Oh! the childish joy with which I fondled my first set of proofs! And how much finer the words looked in print than they ever did in manuscript !One took in the idea of a whole page so charmingly at a glance, instead of having to feel one's way through line after line, and sentence after sentence. There was only one drawback to my happiness-Mackaye did not seem to sympathize with it. He had never grumbled at what I considered, and still do consider, my cardinal offense, the omission of the strong political passages; he seemed, on the contrary, in his inexplicable waywardness, to be rather pleased at it than otherwise. It was my publishing at all at which he growled.

"Ech," he said, owre young to marry, is owre young to write; but it's the way o' these puir distractit times. Nae chick can find a grain o' corn, but oot he rins cackling wi’ the shell on his head, to tell it to a' the warld, as if there was never barley grown on the face o' the earth before. I wonder whether Isaiah began to write before his beard was grown, or Dawvid either? He had mony a long year o' shepherding an moss-trooping, an' rugging an' riving i' the wildnerness, I'll warrant, afore he got thae gran' lyrics o' his oot o' him. Ye might tak' example too, gin ye were minded, by Moses, the man o' God, that was joost forty years at the learning o' the Egyptians, afore he thocht gude to come forward into public life, an' then fun', to his gran' surprise, I warrant, that he'd begun forty years too sune-an' then had forty years mair, after that, o' marching an' law-giving, an' bearing the burdens o' the people, before he turned poet."

Poet, sir! I never saw Moses in that light before."

Then ye'll just read the 90th Psalm- the prayer o' Moses, the Man o' God'-the grandest piece o' lyric, to my taste, that I ever heard o' on the face o' God's earth, an' see what a man can write that'll have the patience to wait a century or twa before he rins to the publisher's. I gie ye up fra' this moment; the letting out o' ink is like the letting out o' waters, or the eating o' opium, or the getting up at public

meetings. When a man begins he canna stop. There's nae mair enslaving lust o' the flesh under the heaven than that same furor scribendi, as the Latins hae it."

But at last my poems were printed, and bound, and actually published; and I sat staring at a book of my own making, and wondering how it ever got into being! And what was more, the book "took," and sold, and was reviewed in People's journals, and in newspapers; and Mackaye himself relaxed into a grin, when his oracle, the Spectator, the only honest paper, according to him, on the face of the earth, condescended, after asserting its impartiality by two or three searching sarcasms, to dismiss me, grimly-benignant, with a paternal pat on the shoulder. Yes I was a real live author at last, and signed myself, by special request, in the Magazine, as "the author of Songs of the Highways." At last

it struck me, and Mackaye too, who, however he hated flunkydom, never overlooked an act of discourtesy, that it would be right for me to call upon the dean, and thank him formally for all the real kindness he had shown me. So I went to the handsome house off Harley-street, and was shown into his study, and saw my own book lying on the table; and was welcomed by the good old man, and congratulated on my success, and asked if I did not see my own wisdom in "yielding to more experienced opinions than my own, and submitting to a censorship which, however severe it might have appeared at first, was, as the event proved, benignant both in its intentions and effects?"

And then I was asked, even I, to breakfast there the next morning. And I went, and found no one there but some scientific gentlemen, to whom I was introduced as "the young man whose poems we were talking of last night." And Lillian sat at the head of the table, and poured out the coffee and tea. And between ecstasy at seeing her, and the intense relief of not finding my dreaded and now hated cousin there, I sat in a delirium of silent joy, stealing glances at her beauty, and listening with all my ears to the conversation, which turned upon the new-married couple.

I heard endless praises, to which I could not but assent in silence, of Lord Ellerton's perfections. His very personal appearance had been enough to captivate my fancy; and then they went on to talk of his magnificent philanthropic schemes, and his deep sense of the high duties of a landlord; and how, finding himself, at his father's death, the possessor of two vast but neglected estates, he had sold one in order to be able to