“You mustn’t work too hard, old fellow.  I wouldn’t stay up too late, if I were you, after that long walk.  You must have gone miles out of your way.”

“I’m not tired now, though.  I feel as if I could write my new book on the spot”; and the young man laughed a gay sweet laugh that struck the father as a new note in his son’s life.

He sat still a moment after his father had left the room.  He cherished his chief treasure of thought in its secret place; he would not enjoy it yet.  He drew up a chair to the table at which he wrote or tried to write, and began taking pens and paper from the drawer.  There was a great pile of ruled paper there; all of it used, on one side, and signifying many hours of desperate scribbling, of heart-searching and rack of his brain; an array of poor, eager lines written by a waning fire with waning hope; all useless and abandoned.  He took up the sheets cheerfully, and began in delicious idleness to look over these fruitless efforts.  A page caught his attention; he remembered how he wrote it while a November storm was dashing against the panes; and there was another, with a queer blot in one corner; he had got up from his chair and looked out, and all the earth was white fairyland, and the snowflakes whirled round and round in the wind.  Then he saw the chapter begun of a night in March:  a great gale blew that night and rooted up one of the ancient yews in the churchyard.  He had heard the trees shrieking in the woods, and the long wail of the wind, and across the heaven a white moon fled awfully before the streaming clouds.  And all these poor abandoned pages now seemed sweet, and past unhappiness was transmuted into happiness, and the nights of toil were holy.  He turned over half a dozen leaves and began to sketch out the outlines of the new book on the unused pages; running out a skeleton plan on one page, and dotting fancies, suggestions, hints on others.  He wrote rapidly, overjoyed to find that loving phrases grew under his pen; a particular scene he had imagined filled him with desire; he gave his hand free course, and saw the written work glowing; and action and all the heat of existence quickened and beat on the wet page.  Happy fancies took shape in happier words, and when at last he leant back in his chair he felt the stir and rush of the story as if it had been some portion of his own life.  He read over what he had done with a renewed pleasure in the nimble and flowing workmanship, and as he put the little pile of manuscript tenderly in the drawer he paused to enjoy the anticipation of tomorrow’s labor.

And then—­but the rest of the night was given to tender and delicious things, and when he went up to bed a scarlet dawn was streaming from the east.

III