The poet was pacing up and down the room; but his pallid face and strange, shining eyes seemed looking out from some other world. Mrs. Clemm sat by the window with a magazine in her hand. Hanny preferred her request timidly. "Oh, come in and hunt them up. Your cousin is quite welcome to anything. Then there are some upstairs, though I brought down that pile over in the corner this very morning." The corner looked attractive. Hanny went thither, and knelt down on the checked matting. There were two books of engravings containing portraits of famous people, some old volumes of verse, some new ones, and magazines. The volumes she wanted were not among them. But she exhumed something else that made her forget the slight, nervous man pacing up and down, and the woman at the window. Turning the leaves of an old novel that had lost one cover, she came across the name of one of her heroes, "Richard of the Lion Heart." She had a passion, just then, for English history. And there was Bulwer's "White Rose of England," in paper covers with a Harper imprint. "Could I take these beside?" she asked, with some hesitation. He glanced over at them as he came to that end of the room. "Those old novels? Yes. Do they let you read novels?" "I read almost anything," and Hanny glanced up with rising colour. "But there are not so many books up here--I live in New York," she added, by way of explanation. A half smile crossed his face, but its melancholy haunted the little girl long afterward. Then she went over to the closet, and soon found her missing volumes, and uttered her gentle Good-afternoon. Mrs. Clemm had folded her sewing, and came out on the porch where the water-pail stood empty, so she started to the well. "Please thank your cousin for her kindness," she said in a soft tone. "I am glad she is fond of books." The modern realistic school, or even the analytic school, would flout Madame Cottin's old novel of "The Saracen" to-day. Perhaps in the year two thousand the novels of to-day will be wondered at. The next morning, the little girl was up in her eyrie in the corner of the porch, and began her story. She was deeply interested in the Crusaders as well. Richard, Saladin, and his noble and knightly brother Melek held her spell-bound. She let the patchwork lie unheeded. Queen Joan, Richard's sister, beautiful and unfortunate in her marriage, almost a prisoner for years, rescued and taken to the Holy Land in company with Berengaria, and treated with Oriental suavity and honour, and loved by Melek Adel, indeed, almost married to him, though history considers it only as one of the many feints of Eastern diplomacy, roused all Hanny's youthful ardour. And Saladin's young nephew, taking knighthood at Richard's hands on Easter morning, was so striking a picture that the child could not understand why Turks and Christians should be bitter enemies, when friendships like this could be cemented, and apparently appreciated by men of such qualities.