My cousin and I stayed at D——­ long enough for the dean to get a reply from the publishers concerning my poems.  They thought that the sale of the book might be greatly facilitated if certain passages of a strong political tendency were omitted; they were somewhat too strong for the present state of the public taste.

On the dean’s advice, I weakly consented to have the book emasculated.  Next day I returned to town, for Sandy Mackaye had written me a characteristic note telling me that he could deposit any trash I had written in a paper called the “Weekly Warwhoop.”

Before I went from D——­, my cousin George warned me not to pay so much attention to Miss Lillian if I wished to stand well with Eleanor, the dean’s niece, who was to marry Lord Lynedale.  He left me suspecting that he had remarked Eleanor’s wish to cool my admiration for Lillian, and was willing, for his own purposes, to further it.

III.—­Riot and Imprisonment

At last my poems were printed and published, and I enjoyed the sensation of being a real live author.  What was more, my book “took” and sold, and was reviewed favourably in journals and newspapers.

It struck me that it would be right to call upon the dean, and so I went to his house off Harley Street.  The good old man congratulated me on my success, and I saw Lillian, and sat in a delirium of silent joy.  Lord Lynedale had become Lord Ellerton, and I listened to the praises that were sung of the newly married couple—­for Eleanor had become Lady Ellerton, and had entered fully into all her husband’s magnificent philanthropic schemes—­a helpmeet, if not an oracular guide.

After this, I had an invitation to tea in Lillian’s own hand, and then came terrible news that Lord Ellerton had been killed by a fall from his horse, and that the dean and Miss Winnstay had left London; and for three years I saw them no more.

What happened in those three years?

Mackaye had warned me not to follow after vanity.  He was a Chartist, and with him and Crossthwaite, my old fellow-workman, I was vowed to the Good Cause of the Charter.  Now I found that I had fallen under suspicion.

“Can you wonder if our friends suspect you?” said Crossthwaite.  “Can you deny that you’ve been off and on lately between flunkeydom and the Cause, like a donkey between two bundles of hay?  Have you not neglected our meetings?  Have you not picked all the spice out of your poems?  Though Sandy is too kind-hearted to tell you, you have disappointed us both miserably, and there’s the long and short of it.”

I hid my face in my hands.  My conscience told me that I had nothing to answer.

Mackaye, to spare me, went on to talk of the agricultural distress, and Crossthwaite explained that he wanted to send a deputation down to the country to spread the principles of the Charter.

“I will go,” I said, starting up.  “They shall see I do care for the Cause.  Where is the place?”