per and its "bird's-eye" furniture, lighted up, while he sat
at the bureau and wrote on into the cold stillness of the London morning,
when the flickering lamplight and the daystar shone together. It was an
interminable labor, and he had always known it to be as hopeless as
alchemy. The gold, the great and glowing masterpiece, would never shine
amongst the dead ashes and smoking efforts of the crucible, but in the
course of the life, in the interval between the failures, he might
possibly discover curious things.

These were the good nights that he could look back on without any fear or
shame, when he had been happy and content on a diet of bread and tea and
tobacco, and could hear of some imbecility passing into its hundredth
thousand, and laugh cheerfully--if only that last page had been imagined
aright, if the phrases noted in the still hours rang out their music when
he read them in the morning. He remembered the drolleries and fantasies
that the worthy Miss Deacon used to write to him, and how he had grinned
at her words of reproof, admonition, and advice. She had once instigated
Dolly _fils_ to pay him a visit, and that young prop of respectability
had talked about the extraordinary running of Bolter at the Scurragh
meeting in Ireland; and then, glancing at Lucian's books, had inquired
whether any of them had "warm bits." He had been kind though patronizing,
and seemed to have moved freely in the most brilliant society of Stoke
Newington. He had not been able to give any information as to the present
condition of Edgar Allan Poe's old school. It appeared eventually that
his report at home had not been a very favorable one, for no invitation
to high tea had followed, as Miss Deacon had hoped. The Dollys knew many
nice people, who were well off, and Lucian's cousin, as she afterwards
said, had done _her_ best to introduce him to the _beau monde_ of those
northern suburbs.

But after the visit of the young Dolly, with what joy he had returned to
the treasures which he had concealed from profane eyes. He had looked out
and seen his visitor on board the tram at the street corner, and he
laughed out loud, and locked his door. There had been moments when he was
lonely, and wished to hear again the sound of friendly speech, but, after
such an irruption of suburban futility, it was a keen delight, to feel
that he was secure on his tower, that he could absorb himself in his
wonderful task as safe and silent as if he were in