s
before these fishing louts take them." Dickson followed obediently.
This was the kind of chance acquaintance for whom he had hoped, and he
was prepared to make the most of him.

The fire burned bright in the little dusky smoking-room, lighted by one
oil-lamp. Mr. Heritage flung himself into a chair, stretched his long
legs, and lit a pipe.

"You like reading?" he asked. "What sort? Any use for poetry?"

"Plenty," said Dickson. "I've aye been fond of learning it up and
repeating it to myself when I had nothing to do. In church and waiting
on trains, like. It used to be Tennyson, but now it's more Browning.
I can say a lot of Browning."

The other screwed his face into an expression of disgust. "I know the
stuff. 'Damask cheeks and dewy sister eyelids.' Or else the Ercles
vein--'God's in His Heaven, all's right with the world.' No good, Mr.
McCunn. All back numbers. Poetry's not a thing of pretty round
phrases or noisy invocations. It's life itself, with the tang of the
raw world in it--not a sweetmeat for middle-class women in parlours."

"Are you a poet, Mr. Heritage?"

"No, Dogson, I'm a paper-maker."

This was a new view to Mr. McCunn. "I just once knew a paper-maker,"
he observed reflectively, "They called him Tosh. He drank a bit."

"Well, I don't drink," said the other. "I'm a paper-maker, but that's
for my bread and butter. Some day for my own sake I may be a poet."

"Have you published anything?"

The eager admiration in Dickson's tone gratified Mr. Heritage. He drew
from his pocket a slim book. "My firstfruits," he said, rather shyly.

Dickson received it with reverence. It was a small volume in grey
paper boards with a white label on the back, and it was lettered:
WHORLS-JOHN HERITAGE'S BOOK. He turned the pages and read a little.
"It's a nice wee book," he observed at length.

"Good God, if you call it nice, I must have failed pretty badly," was
the irritated answer.

Dickson read more deeply and was puzzled. It seemed worse than the
worst of Browning to understand. He found one poem about a garden
entitled "Revue." "Crimson and resonant clangs the dawn," said the
poet. Then he went on to describe noonday:

"Sunflowers, tall Grenadiers, ogle the roses' short-skirted ballet.
The fumes of dark sweet wine hidden in frail petals
Madden the drunkard bees."

This seemed to him an odd way to look at things, and he boggled over a
phrase about an "epicene lily." Then ca