(Sidney Price’s narrative continued)
My signed work had run out. For two weeks nothing had been printed over my signature. So far no comment had been raised. But it was only a question of days. But then one afternoon it all came right. It was like this.
I was sitting eating my lunch at Eliza’s in Birchin Lane. Twenty minutes was the official allowance for the meal, and I took my twenty minutes at two o’clock. The St. Stephen’s Gazette was lying near me. I picked it up. Anything to distract my thoughts from the trouble to come. That was how I felt. Reading mechanically the front page, I saw a poem, and started violently. This was the poem:—
A CRY
Hands at the tiller to steer:
A star in the murky sky:
Water and waste of mere:
Whither and why?
Sting of absorbent night:
Journey of weal or woe:
And overhead the light:
We go—we go?
Darkness a mortal’s part,
Mortals of whom we are:
Come to a mortal’s heart,
Immortal star.
Thos. Blake.
June 6th.
“Rummy, very rummy,” I exclaimed. The poem was dated yesterday. Had Mr. Cloyster, then, continued to work his system with Thomas Blake to the exclusion of the Reverend and myself?
Still worrying over the thing, I turned over the pages of the paper until I chanced to see the following paragraph:
LITERARY GOSSIP