ncealed her, He was approaching--the wondrous Master Mind
of literature.

Would he go by unheeding? Could she let him pass on without one
glance--one word? And yet, how address him? How dare to show her face?

The slow steps ceased and at the same time he fell silent. She could
picture him gazing with unconscious eyes at the fountain while within he
listened to the Genius that prompted his majestic works. Again the
gravel creaked, and then she knew that he had seated himself on the
other bench. The two were sitting back to back with only a stone
partition between them.

To her own surprise, the diffidence which had oppressed her seemed now
to be gradually passing off. She still realized the privilege she
enjoyed in thus sharing his seat, but perhaps Mary Burton was gaining
her head as well as her heart, for she positively began to think of
leaving her concealment, contemplating almost unmoved a meeting with her
demi-god.

Then he spoke.

"The infant first--then the school-boy," he muttered. "So far good! The
third age--m--m--m--" There was a pause before he proceeded, slowly and
distinctly:

"Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing his heart out in a woful ballad--

m--m--m--Ah!--

Made to his mistress' eyebrow."

He chuckled audibly a moment, and then, speaking a little louder:

"Fenton to the life, poor lad!" he said.

Phoebe sat up very straight with a startled movement. Oh, to think of
it! That she should have forgotten Sir Guy! To have sought Will
Shakespeare for the sole purpose of tracing her threatened lover--and
then to forget him for a simple name--a mere celebrity!

Unconscious of the small inward drama so near at hand, the playwright
proceeded with his composition.

"'Sighing his heart out,'" he mused. "Nay, that were too strong a touch
for Jacques. Lighter--lighter." Then, after a moment of thought:
"Ay--ay!" he chuckled. "'Sighing like furnace'--poor Fenton! How like a
very furnace in his dolor! Yet did he justice to the Canary. So--so! To
go back now:

"Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace with a woful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow."

'Twill pass, in sooth, 'twill pass!"

Lightly Phoebe climbed onto the bench and peeped over the back. She
looked down sidewise upon the author, who was writing rapidly in an
illegible hand upon one of his paper slips.

There was the head so familiar to us all--the domelike br