“I’m going to have it printed,” he said, “and send it to all the publishers; and also to literary men and to magazines.” “And are you going to sign your name to it?” she cried. “I’ve already signed my name to it,” he answered. “And when are you going to do it?” “As soon as the book comes back from the next publisher.” Then he sat down to breakfast; and afterwards, without resting, he finished the pot-boiler, and took it to the editor. After a due interval he went again, trembling and faint with anxiety. He had sold only one book-review, and he was using Corydon’s money again. People who hated him had predicted that he would do just that, and he had answered that he would die first! He came home, radiant with delight. “He says he’ll take it!” he proclaimed. “Only I’ve got to do a new ending for the fourth installment--he wants something more exciting. So I’m going to have the countess caught in a burning tower!” And he wrote that, and went yet again, and came home with a hundred dollars buttoned tightly in his inside vest-pocket. He was like a man who has escaped from a dungeon. The field was clear before him at last! His manifesto was going out to the world! BOOK V THE BAIT IS SEIZED _They sat, gazing down the slope of the little vale. She was turning idly the pages of the book, and she read to him-- “Lovely all times she lies, lovely to-night!-- Only, methinks, some loss of habit’s power Befalls me wandering through this upland dim. Once pass’d I blindfold here, at any hour; Now seldom come I, since I came with him.” “It was here we first read the poem,” he said. “Every spot brings back some line of it.” “Even the old oak-tree where we used to sit,” she smiled-- “Hear it, O Thyrsis, still our tree is there!”_ Section 1. Thyrsis was half hoping that the next publisher would decline the manuscript; and he was only mildly stirred when he got a letter saying that although the publisher could not make an offer for the book, one of his readers was so much interested in it that he would like to have a talk with the author. Thyrsis replied that he was willing; and to his surprise he learned that the reader was none other than that Prof. Osborne, who in the university had impressed upon him his ignorance of the art of writing. He paid a call at the professor’s home, and they had a long talk. There was nothing said about their former interview. Evidently the other recognized that Thyrsis had succeeded in making good his claim to be allowed to hew his own way; and Thyrsis was content with that tacit surrender. They talked about the book. The professor first assured him that it would not sell, and then went on to explain to him why; and so they came to a grapple. “The thing is sincere, perhaps even exalted,” said Prof. Osborne; “but it’s overstrained and exaggerated.” “But isn’t it alive?” asked Thyrsis.