“I have come, sir—­” the young poet began, interrupting him.

“Let me look at your manuscript, if you please, Mr. Popkins,” said the publisher, interrupting in his turn.

“Hopkins, if you please, sir,” Gifted suggested mildly, proceeding to extract the manuscript, which had got wedged into his pocket, and seemed to be holding on with all its might.  He was wondering all the time over the extraordinary clairvoyance of the publisher, who had looked through so many thick folds, broadcloth, lining, brown paper, and seen his poems lying hidden in his breast-pocket.  The idea that a young person coming on such an errand should have to explain his intentions would have seemed very odd to the publisher.  He knew the look which belongs to this class of enthusiasts just as a horse-dealer knows the look of a green purchaser with the equine fever raging in his veins.  If a young author had come to him with a scrap of manuscript hidden in his boots, like Major Andre’s papers, the publisher would have taken one glance at him and said, “Out with it!”

While he was battling for the refractory scroll with his pocket, which turned half wrong side out, and acted as things always do when people are nervous and in a hurry, the publisher directed his conversation again to Master Byles Gridley.

“A remarkable book, that of yours, Mr. Gridley, would have a great run if it were well handled.  Came out twenty years too soon,—­that was the trouble.  One of our leading scholars was speaking of it to me the other day.  ‘We must have a new edition,’ he said; people are just ripe for that book.’  Did you ever think of that?  Change the form of it a little, and give it a new title, and it will be a popular book.  Five thousand or more, very likely.”

Mr. Gridley felt as if he had been rapidly struck on the forehead with a dozen distinct blows from a hammer not quite big enough to stun him.  He sat still without saying a word.  He had forgotten for the moment all about poor Gifted Hopkins, who had got out his manuscript at last, and was calming the disturbed corners of it.  Coming to himself a little, he took a large and beautiful silk handkerchief, one of his new purchases, from his pocket, and applied it to his face, for the weather seemed to have grown very warm all at once.  Then he remembered the errand on which he had come, and thought of this youth, who had got to receive his first hard lesson in life, and whom he had brought to this kind man that it should be gently administered.

“You surprise me,” he said,—­“you surprise me.  Dead and buried.  Dead and buried.  I had sometimes thought that—­at some future period, after I was gone, it might—­but I hardly know what to say about your suggestions.  But here is my young friend, Mr. Hopkins, who would like to talk with you, and I will leave him in your hands.  I am at the Planet Hotel, if you should care to call upon me.  Good morning.  Mr. Hopkins will explain everything to you more at his ease, without me, I am confident.”