"Hush, hush, Helen. I need no one, nothing now!" cried Leonard, and his
tears gushed over the little hand that clasped his own.




CHAPTER XVIII.

Harley L'Estrange was a man whom all things that belong to the romantic
and poetic side of our human life deeply impressed. When he came to
learn the ties between these two Children of Nature, standing side by
side, alone amidst the storms of fate, his heart was more deeply moved
than it had been for many years. In those dreary attics, overshadowed by
the smoke and reek of the humble suburb, the workday world in its
harshest and tritest forms below and around them, he recognized that
divine poem which comes out from all union between the mind and the
heart. Here, on the rough deal table (the ink scarcely dry), lay the
writings of the young wrestler for fame and bread; there, on the other
side of the partition, on that mean pallet, lay the boy's sole comforter,
the all that warmed his heart with living mortal affection. On one side
the wall, the world of imagination; on the other, this world of grief and
of love. And in both, a spirit equally sublime,--unselfish devotion,--
"the something afar from the sphere of our sorrow."

He looked round the room into which he had followed Leonard, on quitting
Helen's bedside. He noted the manuscripts on the table, and pointing to
them, said gently, "And these are the labours by which you supported the
soldier's orphan?--soldier yourself in a hard battle!"

"The battle was lost,--I could not support her," replied Leonard,