vel, and want help to get it into print,"
returned the Chieftain slowly. He had drawn down his lips into an
expression of preternatural gravity, but the hard look had disappeared.
The murder was out, and he was not angry; he might pretend to be, but
Margot was too sharp-witted to be frightened by a pretence.

She drew a sigh of relief as she replied--

"No, indeed. Couldn't to save my life. It's--Ron! I was thinking of
him, not of myself. He is a poet!"

The Chieftain groaned aloud, as if in pain.

"Oh, I know you won't believe it, but he is! He writes wonderful poems.
Not rhymes, but poems; beautiful poems that live in your mind. He will
be another Tennyson or Browning when he is a little older."

The Chieftain groaned again, a trifle more loudly than before.

"It's true! It really is true. You must have seen yourself that he is
different from other boys of his age. You heard him reeling off those
impromptu lines the other day, and said how clever they were! I have
seen you looking at his face when he has been thinking out some idea. I
knew what he was doing, and you didn't; but you guessed that he was
different from ordinary people."

"I saw that he was mooning about something, and wondered if he was right
in the head! If he'd been my boy, I should have taken care to keep his
nose so close to the grindstone that he would have no time to moon!
Poet, indeed! Didn't you tell me that your father was a successful
business man? What is he about, to countenance such nonsense?"

"He doesn't!" replied Margot sadly. "No one does but me, and that's why
I had to act. Father agrees with you. He doesn't care for books, and
looks down upon literary men as poor, effeminate sort of creatures, who
know nothing of the world. He is ashamed that his only son writes
verses. Ron detests the idea of business, but he has had to promise
father that he would go into his office if at the end of a year he had
had no encouragement to persevere in literature. But how is a young
unknown poet to make himself known? The magazines announce that they
can accept no unsolicited poetical contributions; the publishers laugh
at the idea of bringing out a book by a man of whom no one has heard. A
boy might be a second Shakespeare, but no one would believe in him until
they had first broken his heart by their ridicule and unbelief. The
year is out in September, so matters were getting desperate, when at
last I--thought of this p