It is true that all the books in the dining-room had belonged to Miss Esperance, but Mr. Wycherly had reckoned without the Admiral. His books were there too. These included the works of Henry Fielding and Tobias Smollett, and there was on the top shelf a long row of little books, "the dear and dumpy twelves" beloved by our ancestors. The book-case was a tall one, and, with the natural perversity of children, Jane-Anne attacked the top row first. Just because she could not reach it, she desired ardently to look at the small dull-coloured books on the top shelf. So she dragged up a chair, placed a work-box upon that and then, mounted upon the two, she could read the titles on the books, and pull the books out at her ease. There were ten little books all alike, bound in dark green cloth with a shield and a coronet in gold above the title on the backs, and a golden crest on the front cover. Haphazard she pulled one out just to look at it. Evidently it had been much read at one time, for it opened of itself and she saw that it was poetry and that certain of the verses were marked at the side in pencil, just as she marked her favourite texts. "The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece, Where burning Sappho loved and sung." Where had she heard those lines before? Slowly and carefully she read on till she gave a little cry and nearly fell off the work-box in her excitement. "The mountains look on Marathon— And Marathon looks on the sea— And musing there an hour alone, I dreamed that Greece might still be free." The long quest was at an end. The poem that her father had chanted as he used to carry her about, was found. She jumped off the work-box on to the floor, and sat down upon it, leaning her back against the book-case. The tears were wet on her cheeks as she read, and her breath came quickly as though she had been running. She was deeply moved. She repeated the lines softly, whispering them to herself, sometimes mispronouncing the long words but ever vividly and intensely alive to the music of the measure, to the nobility of the conception, to the tragic dignity of its expression. The dew of genius had fallen upon the thought, and the words bloomed again in their fiery beauty for this small, unlettered girl, who, with something of the spirit of old Greece, sat weeping over the wonder of it. Over and over again she read those sixteen verses, till she heard her aunt calling her to come to dinner, and, carrying the precious work with her, she darted upstairs to her bedroom, hid it in a drawer, and rushed down again in a tumult of excitement that could find no outlet. "You’ve got a cold, Jane-Anne," said Mrs. Dew as she carved the joint. "Your nose is red an’ you’re sniffling." Jane-Anne did not explain. The imputation must be borne. "I don’t think it’s much, aunt," she said meekly. "Did you ever," she added in her eager way, "hear of anybody called Lord Byron?"