Shortly after she stole from the room, and into her own; and there, kneeling down, she prayed, and her prayer was somewhat this--"Guard me against my own selfish heart. May I never be a burden to him who has shielded me." Perhaps, as the Creator looks down on this world, whose wondrous beauty beams on us more and more, in proportion as our science would take it from poetry into law--perhaps He beholds nothing so beautiful as the pure heart of a simple loving child. CHAPTER XIV. Leonard went out the next day with his precious MSS. He had read sufficient of modern literature to know the names of the principal London publishers; and to these he took his way with a bold step, though a beating heart. That day he was out longer than the last; and when he returned, and came into the little room, Helen uttered a cry, for she scarcely recognised him. There was on his face so deep, so concentrated a despondency. He sat down listlessly, and did not kiss her this time, as she stole towards him. He felt so humbled. He was a king deposed. _He_ take charge of another life! He! She coaxed him at last into communicating his day's chronicle. The reader beforehand knows too well what it must be, to need detailed repetition. Most of the publishers had absolutely refused to look at his MSS.; one or two had good-naturedly glanced over and returned them at once, with a civil word or two of flat rejection. One publisher alone--himself a man of letters, and who in youth had gone through the same bitter process of dis-illusion that now awaited the village genius--volunteered some kindly though stern explanation and counsel to the unhappy boy. This gentleman read a portion of Leonard's principal poem with attention, and even with frank admiration. He could appreciate the rare promise that it manifested. He sympathized with the boy's history, and even with his hopes; and then he said, in bidding him farewell-- "If I publish this poem for you, speaking as a trader, I shall be a considerable loser. Did I publish all that I admire, out of sympathy with the author, I should be a ruined man. But suppose that, impressed as I really am with the evidence of no common poetic gifts in this MS., I publish it, not as a trader, but a lover of literature, I shall in reality, I fear, render you a great disservice, and perhaps unfit your whole life for the exertions on which you must rely for independence." "How, sir?" cried Leonard--"Not that I would ask you to injure yourself for me," he added with proud tears in his eyes.