somewhat different. Why, it is a veritable romance--an affair
of Daphne and Corydon--although, to be unpardonably candid, the plot of
your romance, my young Arcadians, is not the most original conceivable.
I think that the denouement need not baffle our imaginations."

The dwarf went toward Sarah Drew. The chary sunlight had found the
gold in her hair, and its glint was brightly visible to him. "My
dear--" he said. His thin long fingers touched her capable hand. It
was a sort of caress--half-timid. "My dear, I owe my life to you. My
body is at most a flimsy abortion such as a night's exposure would have
made more tranquil than it is just now. Yes, it was you who found a
caricature of the sort of man that Mr. Hughes here is, disabled,
helpless, and--for reasons which doubtless seemed to you
sufficient--contrived that this unsightly parody continue in existence.
I am not lovable, my dear. I am only a hunchback, as you can see. My
aspirations and my sickly imaginings merit only the derision of a
candid clean-souled being such as you are." His finger-tips touched
the back of her hand again. "I think there was never a maker of
enduring verse who did not at one period or another long to exchange an
assured immortality for a sturdier pair of shoulders. I think--I think
that I am prone to speak at random," Pope said, with his half-drowsy
smile. "Yet, none the less, an honest man, as our kinsmen in Adam
average, is bound to pay his equitable debts."

She said, "I do not understand."

"I have perpetrated certain jingles," Pope returned. "I had not
comprehended until to-day they are the only children I shall leave
behind me. Eh, and what would you make of them, my dear, could
ingenuity contrive a torture dire enough to force you into reading
them! . . . Misguided people have paid me for contriving these
jingles. So that I have money enough to buy you from your father just
as I would purchase one of his heifers. Yes, at the very least I have
money, and I have earned it. I will send your big-thewed adorer--I
believe that Hughes is the name?--L500 of it this afternoon. That sum,
I gather, will be sufficient to remove your father's objection to your
marriage with Mr. Hughes."

Pope could not but admire himself tremendously. Moreover, in such
matters no woman is blind. Tears came into Sarah's huge brown eyes.
This tenderhearted girl was not thinking of John Hughes now. Pope
noted the fact with the pettiest