in. And if they did, I should only get
laughed at. Some time ago a man wrote to the _Reader_, complaining of his
play being stolen. He said that he had sent a little one-act comedy to
Burleigh, the great dramatist, asking for his advice. Burleigh gave his
advice and took the idea for his own very successful play. So the man
said, and I daresay it was true enough. But the victim got nothing by his
complaint. 'A pretty state of things,' everybody said. 'Here's a Mr.
Tomson, that no one has ever heard of, bothers Burleigh with his rubbish,
and then accuses him of petty larceny. Is it likely that a man of
Burleigh's position, a playwright who can make his five thousand a year
easily, would borrow from an unknown Tomson?' I should think it very
likely, indeed," Lucian went on, chuckling, "but that was their verdict.
No; I don't think I'll write to the papers."

"Well, well, my boy, I suppose you know your own business best. I think
you are mistaken, but you must do as you like."

"It's all so unimportant," said Lucian, and he really thought so. He had
sweeter things to dream of, and desired no communion of feeling with that
madman who had left Caermaen some few hours before. He felt he had made a
fool of himself, he was ashamed to think of the fatuity of which he had
been guilty, such boiling hatred was not only wicked, but absurd. A man
could do no good who put himself into a position of such violent
antagonism against his fellow-creatures; so Lucian rebuked his heart,
saying that he was old enough to know better. But he remembered that he
had sweeter things to dream of; there was a secret ecstasy that he
treasured and locked tight away, as a joy too exquisite even for thought
till he was quite alone; and then there was that scheme for a new book
that he had laid down hopelessly some time ago; it seemed to have arisen
into life again within the last hour; he understood that he had started
on a false tack, he had taken the wrong aspect of his idea. Of course the
thing couldn't be written in that way; it was like trying to read a page
turned upside down; and he saw those characters he had vainly sought
suddenly disambushed, and a splendid inevitable sequence of events
unrolled before him.

It was a true resurrection; the dry plot he had constructed revealed
itself as a living thing, stirring and mysterious, and warm as life
itself. The parson was smoking stolidly to all appearance, but in reality
he was full of amazement at