Dallas thrilled. That had all the ballad wizardry of Scott, and a story behind it which Scott could never have attempted: modern, throbbing, wicked, fascinating. But he was silent, biding his time. Not a word would he risk, not an interruption. Byron read on, chilling under what he believed to be silent disapproval, and at last flung the manuscript down and glared at Dallas.

"I told you! I said you would think it pap. Now, say your worst."

The critic collected his thoughts. He spoke with a weight of responsibility on him.

"You have written one of the most delightful poems I ever read. Story also. I have been entirely fascinated. Give me the rest to read. Breathe not a word to any one. I pledge my life on its making your reputation.”

Byron laughed, resounding laughter. Not a word did he believe, not a word more would he hear. He flung the sheets at Dallas.

“Take it, read it, burn it as you please. I give it you to burn or publish or both. Horace Horace is what I stand or fall by. You demented ass! You double-distilled old woman! To take the paste and leave the diamond! Get thee behind me, Satan, for thou savourest of the things of this world, not of the spirit."

He would talk of it no more. After some desultory speech concerning his prospects in London society and the still more depressing prospects of selling Rochdale, Dallas took himself off, his prize (and the world's) under his arm-"Childe Harold's Pilgrimage." He literally trembled as he walked. Supposing a hackney coach should annihilate him and his Argosy. Supposing Byron in his obstinate madness should revoke his words and flatly decline publication. Horrors unspeakable crowded upon him before he got safely to his rooms and sat down to read.

One may abridge the description of his delight, with a tinge of envy for the first to read it, the Columbus of that land of captivating romance. There had never been anything like it in the world before. It could not cloy, for the Byronic salt and sparkle, the swooping, pouncing audacity of the man who snapped his fingers in the face of the decorous public and beckoned to the old Adam in each of them, pervaded every page.

Lord, what an achievement! Of course he would publish it and it should have every chance. None of your obscure publishers like Cawthorn. John Murray, second of the glorious dynasty, the dawning publisher of the fashionable world-he, he was the man!

Dallas wasted no more time on Byron. He betook himself to Murray, and found his opinion wholly confirmed. With trembling lips Dallas suggested "a very liberal agreement” and Murray, keen-eyed, asked but a few days' consideration of terms.

The poem was a dazzling novelty. The matter must be carried through as quickly, quietly as possible. Such was Dallas's stipulation, for he lived in fear of some contradictory folly on Byron's part which would land him in disappointment. Those days of Murray's consideration were anxious indeed to him.

Heaven knows what might have happened but that Fate and an upholsterer intervened. For while Byron still lingered at Reddish's, taking a fortnight to attend to business and not, perhaps, overeager for the inevitable meeting with his mother, alarming intelligence reached him.

She had suffered from one of her many ailments and unfortunately a firm of upholsterers chose that moment for sending in a bill of a length and proportion which roused her to one of her furies. The violent rage brought on an attack of apoplexy and before Byron could reach Newstead she was dead.

CHAPTER IV

WOMEN

"O where are you going with your lovelocks flowing,
On the west wing blowing along this valley track?”
"The downward path is easy, come with me an it please ye,
We shall escape the uphill by never turning back.”

-CHRISTINA ROSSETTI.

So it was over-the long antagonism, the cruelties that had warped his life. She had left her mark behind her, stamped in shrinking, defiant flesh and blood-but she was gone. All comes to an end.

The blow was so sudden, that for a moment-only a moment-it stunned him, less with grief than a kind of wild surprise that such things could be. Curiously, she had believed when he had left England that they might never meet again. She had said to her waiting-woman, "If I should be dead before Lord Byron comes down, what a strange thing it would be!"

It was a strange thing, and the strangeness left him disordered and broken in a world of confused thought which might well pass for grief with himself and others. He rebelled against it inwardly-one did not grieve, why should one? She had been harsh, cruel, an obstacle and hindrance from the beginning of his being—and yet—yet somehow one must care despite all will and reason. The lurking under-self, which no man can control, winced and was bruised. He suffered in every fibre, not indeed from love for the dead woman who had borne him in her bosom, but in touching the problems of life, of death and their unspeakable correlations and dreadful possibilities. A ghastly loneliness fell upon him like eclipse, when Death

sat down with him by his fireside, and he shuddered in vain in the freezing presence-for himself, not for her loss.

He would not follow her coffin to the grave-that would be too terrible. He stood by the Abbey door and watched the slow blackness wind away under the trees-the procession which goes and returns no more then turning, shouted loudly to his servant Rushton to fetch the gloves: animal exercise, anything to stir his blood, stagnant in the cold pools of death.

In the churchyard they committed the body of "our sister" to the dust. In the house she had left for ever the strange product of her body was sparring, shouting with a servant. He endured it as long as he could, then flung the gloves aside and vanished. The man had thought his blows more violent than usual, he said, and that was true enough, for he was sparring against many things beside his opponent. But he was beaten at the game, as he was to be beaten at many more. What he did in his solitude none could tell. There were miserable memories to be confronted, lost hopes and chances wailing in his ears, and he was the man to feel those to the last and uttermost.

But all this was well for Dallas. Byron's absence and absorption certainly smoothed the way for the hope, the certainty, which Murray and he shared between them. Murray's reading had produced the offer of those liberal terms which hung like the golden apples of the Hesperides before Dallas's bedazzled eyes. All was very well. And while Byron was making his bitter, misanthropic will at Newstead (his body to be buried by his dog, without ceremony or burial service), while all his thoughts were on mortality and the Angel of the Darker Drink, Fame, Love, Delight were hovering over him, iris-winged and un

seen.

At length, "Childe Harold” in the press beyond recall,

he came slowly, though with returning interest, through Cambridge to London, to meet the first invitation of the great world—an invitation of curiosity more than admiration-the host, the witty and fashionable Rogers, poet of "The Pleasures of Memory."

Such a company to meet him! No large, vapid dinners for Rogers, where true conversation shrieks in vain against a wind of voices: the guests as carefully chosen as his wines the others known already, Byron to be sampled and his merits considered for future combination. Thomas Campbell, the singer of robust patriotic measures (Byron, who had no passion for English patriotic verse, glancing through his "Mariners of England" and "Battle of the Baltic" before he started, that he might not be at a disadvantage in compliment!), Moore and his Anacreontics he knew all too well already-it was a great occasion for the young celebrity to be weighed in such scales.

One may picture his careful mourning toilet, the weight of melancholy to match it, the unseen but deeply realized decoration of his peerage and Norman descent, so impressive (one might suppose) to these men of yesterday, who none the less had cut their niche in the Temple of Fame. These worldly superiorities must take the place of accomplishment until Byron had had time to cut his own beside them. He was determined they should carry their full weight.

He bowed with cold distinction on entering those delightful rooms of Rogers', where all was calculated to the perfection of temperate and genial luxury. That quiet house overlooking the Green Park was the very meetingplace of intellect, the closed portal of paradise to many a literary aspirant. And he was within it at last.

The party of three, none of whom had ever seen Byron before, awaited him. They gazed in astonishment at the