“And they are printing the poem in three volumes?” asked the poet, “with a new phase in each; and also they are omitting the name of the author from the title page?” “Yes, old boy,” said Jimmy Dodson, “they are doing all that. All your instructions are being carried out to the letter. By the way, would you like a frontispiece in the first volume of the Wayfarer communing for the first time with Earth, his Mother? I could get a chap I know to draw it; last year he had a picture accepted at the Academy; and Octavius would raise no objection.” “No, no,” said the poet almost sternly. “It was only a suggestion, you know, old boy,” said Jimmy Dodson with nervous humility. “You are not offended, old boy, are you?” In answer the poet extended that weak left hand which he could hardly raise. Dodson’s first impulse was to clasp the fragile fingers in his own, which were of such power; but a glance at the countenance of the blind poet caused this impulse to yield to a finer instinct. Without in the least knowing why, Dodson sank to his knees and saluted the extended hand with a reverence he could not have exceeded had it been that of his sovereign. LIV Every evening thenceforward until the third volume had been set up in type, James Dodson would return to the little room with further instalments of the printed pages, newly from the press. And full many weary hours did the poet’s aged father labour through the day and night to compare the manuscript with the printed work. Weak and frail as the old man now was, half sightless as were his eyes, he yet addressed himself to this task with a joyful rapture. Sometimes, in the stress of the gladness that overcame him, he would read aloud to the poet in his thin, quavering tones, some of those passages whose quality he could not forbear to acclaim. At these times the blind poet, ever sitting by the hearth, would listen, breathing deep, with head uplifted, and with strange emotions flitting across his inexpressibly beautiful face. And then when through sheer weariness the voice of the aged man had ceased to utter the wonderful music, he himself, in his rich and rare tones, would take up the theme; and he would speak the lines of ineffable majesty with a justice so delicate that his aged father needed no longer to look at the manuscript, but was able to verify the printed page by the poet’s voice. Sometimes these labours would even be conducted in the presence of James Dodson. And although that robust denizen of the great world out of doors, whenever he found himself in his natural element, could never bring himself to believe that the labours he was undertaking with such an all-consuming zeal were being conducted in the cause of reason and sanity, no sooner did he enter the little room of an evening than his scepticism fell from him like an outer garment.