"Go there, and fancy yourself in Arcadia."

Leonard was too pleased to obey. He found out the little arbour at one
end of a deserted bowling-green. All was still,--the hedgerow shut out
the sight of the inn. The sun lay warm on the grass, and glinted
pleasantly through the leaves of the ash. And Leonard there wrote the
first essay from his hand as Author by profession. What was it that he
wrote? His dreamy impressions of London, an anathema on its streets and
its hearts of stone, murmurs against poverty, dark elegies on fate?

Oh, no! little knowest thou true genius, if thou askest such questions,
or thinkest that there under the weeping-ash the task-work for bread was
remembered; or that the sunbeam glinted but over the practical world,
which, vulgar and sordid, lay around. Leonard wrote a fairy tale,--one
of the loveliest you can conceive, with a delicate touch of playful
humour, in a style all flowered over with happy fancies. He smiled as he
wrote the last word,--he was happy. In rather more than an hour Mr.
Burley came to him, and found him with that smile on his lips.

Mr. Burley had a glass of brandy-and-water in his hand; it was his third.
He too smiled, he too looked happy. He read the paper aloud, and well.
He was very complimentary. "You will do!" said he, clapping Leonard on
the back. "Perhaps some day you will catch my one-eyed perch." Then he
folded up the manuscript, scribbled off a note, put the whole in one
envelope, and they returned to London.

Mr. Burley disappeared within a dingy office near Fleet Street, on which
was inscribed, "Office of the 'Beehive,'" and soon came forth with a
golden sovereign in his hand, Leonard's first-fruits. Leonard thought
Peru lay before him. He accompanied Mr. Burley to that gentleman's