During the few minutes he had spent in the publisher’s office the sky had become overcast and a biting east wind had blown up from the river; but the change in the outside world was as nothing to that within him.  He had not known how large a part of himself was his dream of becoming a poet.  It now seemed to him that it was all of him—­had from the beginning of his life been all of him.  Since those old days at Stoke-Newington, he had been building—­building—­building—­this castle in the air; now, at one fell blow, the whole fabric was laid in ruin!

Weakness seized his limbs and deep dejection his spirits.  His life might as well come to an end for there was nothing left for him to live for.  How indeed, was he to live when the only work he knew how to do had “no marketable value?” The money with which Mrs. Allan supplied him, before he left home—­“to give him a start”—­would soon be exhausted.  What if he should not be able to make more?

Though he was in the city of his birth, he found himself an absolute stranger.  If any of those who had been sympathetic friends to his mother were left, he had no idea who or where they were.

He went back to the lodgings he had engaged to a night of bitter, sleepless tossing.

But with the new day, youth and hope asserted themselves.  He decided that he would not accept as final the verdict of any one publisher, though that one stood at the head of the list.  With others, however, it was just the same; and another night of even greater wretchedness followed.

Upon his third day in Boston (he felt that he had been there a year!) he wandered aimlessly about, spirit broken, ambition gone.  Finally, in Washington Street, he discovered, upon a small door, a modest sign bearing the legend: 

“Calvin F.S.  Thomas.  Printer.”

With freshly springing hope, he entered the little shop and was received by a pale, soft-eyed, sunken-chested and somewhat threadbare youth of about his own age, who in reply to his inquiry, announced himself as “Mr. Thomas.”

Between these two boys, as they stood looking frankly into each other’s eyes, that mysterious thing which we call sympathy, which like the wind “bloweth where it listeth and no man knoweth whence it cometh or whither it goeth,” sprang instantly into being.  The one found himself without his usual diffidence declaring himself a poet in search of a publisher, and the other was at once alert with interest.

Calvin Thomas had but just—­timorously, for he was poor as well as young—­set up his little shop, hoping to build up a trade as a printer.  To be a publisher had not entered into his wildest imaginings—­much less a publisher for a poet!  But he was, like his visitor, a dreamer, and like him ambitious.  Why should he not be a publisher as well as a printer?  The poet had not his manuscripts with him, but offered to recite some extracts, which he did, with glowing voice and gesture—­explaining figures of speech and allusions as he went along.