gushed forth, filling the vault of heaven with a fiery splendor, for those tears were falling stars.  It was a rash idea, but beautiful; beautiful and pathetic; wonderfully pathetic, the way I had it, with the rhyme and all to help.  At the end of each verse there was a two-line refrain pitying the poor earthly lover separated so far, and perhaps forever, from her he loved so well, and growing always paler and weaker and thinner in his agony as he neared the cruel grave—­the most touching thing—­even the boys themselves could hardly keep back their tears, the way Noel said those lines.  There were eight four-line stanzas in the first end of the poem—­the end about the rose, the horticultural end, as you may say, if that is not too large a name for such a little poem—­and eight in the astronomical end—­sixteen stanzas altogether, and I could have made it a hundred and fifty if I had wanted to, I was so inspired and so all swelled up with beautiful thoughts and fancies; but that would have been too many to sing or recite before a company that way, whereas sixteen was just right, and could be done over again if desired.  The boys were amazed that I could make such a poem as that out of my own head, and so was I, of course, it being as much a surprise to me as it could be to anybody, for I did not know that it was in me.  If any had asked me a single day before if it was in me, I should have told them frankly no, it was not.

That is the way with us; we may go on half of our life not knowing such a thing is in us, when in reality it was there all the time, and all we needed was something to turn up that would call for it.  Indeed, it was always so without family.  My grandfather had a cancer, and they never knew what was the matter with him till he died, and he didn’t know himself.  It is wonderful how gifts and diseases can be concealed in that way.  All that was necessary in my case was for this lovely and inspiring girl to cross my path, and out came the poem, and no more trouble to me to word it and rhyme it and perfect it than it is to stone a dog.  No, I should have said it was not in me; but it was.

The boys couldn’t say enough about it, they were so charmed and astonished.  The thing that pleased them the most was the way it would do the Paladin’s business for him.  They forgot everything in their anxiety to get him shelved and silenced.  Noel Rainguesson was clear beside himself with admiration of the poem, and wished he could do such a thing, but it was out of his line, and he couldn’t, of course.  He had it by heart in half an hour, and there was never anything so pathetic and beautiful as the way he recited it.  For that was just his gift—­that and mimicry.  He could recite anything better than anybody in the world, and he could take of La Hire to the very life—­or anybody else, for that matter.  Now I never could recite worth a farthing; and when I tried with this poem the boys wouldn’t let me finish; they would nave nobody but Noel.  So then, as I wanted the