not soil her treasure. Sometimes Mr. Flower would ask Angel to show
it to one of the family friends; and thus one evening it came beneath
the eyes of a little Scotch printer who had a great love for poetry and
some taste in it.

"The man's a genius," he said, with all that authority with which a
strong Scotch accent mysteriously endows the humblest Scot.

"The man's a genius," he repeated; "his poems must be printed."

Henry had already found that this was easier said than done, for he had
already tried several London publishers who professed their willingness
to publish--at his expense. This little Scotch printer, however, was to
prove more venturesome. He forthwith communicated a proposal to Henry
through the Flowers. If Henry would provide him with a list of a certain
number of friends he could rely on for subscriptions, he would take the
risk of printing an edition, and give Henry half the profits,--a
proposal as generous as it was rash. Angel communicated the offer in an
excited little letter, with the result that Mr. Leith and Henry met one
morning in the bar-parlour of "The Green Man Still," and parted an hour
or so after in a high state of friendship, and deeply pledged together
to a mutual adventure of three hundred copies of a book to be called
"The Book of Angelica," and to be printed in so dainty a fashion that
the mere outside should attract buyers.

Mr. Leith worked under difficulties, for his business, small as it was,
was much saddled with pecuniary obligations which it but inadequately
supported. His printing of Henry's poems was really a work of sheer
idealism which none but a Scotsman, or perhaps an Irishman, would have
undertaken; and it was a work that might at any moment be interrupted by
bailiffs, empowered to carry away the presses and the very types over
which Henry loved to hang in his spare hours, trying to read in the
lines of mysteriously carved metal, his "Madrigal to Angelica singing,"
or his "Sonnet on first beholding Angelica."

Then Mr. Leith was of a convivial disposition; and Henry and he must
have spent more hours drinking to the success of the little book than
would have sufficed to print it twice over. However, the day did at last
come when it was a living, breathing reality, and when Angel and Henry
sat with tears of joy over the little new-born "Book of Angelica." Was
it not, they told each other, the little spirit-child of their love? How
wonderful it all was! How wonderful