The junior reporter filled his two columns and enjoyed himself in the doing of it. He concluded with the words: “The authoress will make a great success. If she will come to the capital, where genius is always appreciated, she will, without doubt, make her fortune. Nay, if Miss Bal—but again we cannot proceed for the want of an interpreter—if Miss B., we say, will only accept a position at Cleary’s Waxworks and give readings from her poetry, or exhibit herself in the act of pronouncing her own name, she will be a greater draw in this city than Punch and Judy, or even the latest American advertising evangelist, who preaches standing on his head.”
The junior reporter ceased here from very admiration at his own cleverness in so exactly hitting the tone of the masters of his craft, and handed his manuscript in to the editor.
It was the gloaming of a long June day when Rob Affleck, the woodman over at Barbrax, having been at New Dalry with a cart of wood, left his horse on the roadside and ran over through Gavin’s old short cut, now seldom used, to Janet’s cottage with a paper in a yellow wrapper.
“Leave it on the step, and thank you kindly, Rob,” said a weak voice within; and Rob, anxious about his horse and his bed, did so without another word. In a moment or two Janet crawled to the door, listened to make sure that Rob was really gone, opened the door, and protruded a hand wasted to the hard, flat bone—an arm that ought for years to have been full of flesh and noble curves.
When Janet got back to bed it was too dark to see anything except the big printing at the top of the paper.
“Two columns of it!” said Janet, with great thankfulness in her heart, lifting up her soul to God who had given her the power to sing. She strained her prematurely old and weary eyes to make out the sense. “A genuine source of pride to every native of the ancient province,” she read.
“The Lord be praised!” said Janet, in a rapture of devout thankfulness; “though I never really doubted it,” she added, as though asking pardon for a moment’s distrust. “But I tried to write these poems to the glory of God and not to my own praise, and He will accept them and keep me humble under the praise of men as well as under their neglect.”
So clutching the precious paper close to her breast, and letting tears of thankfulness fall on the article, which, had they fallen on the head of the junior reporter, would have burned like fire, she patiently awaited the coming dawn.
“I can wait till the morning now to read the rest,” she said.
So hour after hour, with her eyes wide, staring hard at the gray window-squares, she waited the dawn from the east. About half-past two there was a stirring and a moaning among the pines, and the roar of the sudden gust came with the breaking day through the dark arches. In the whirlwind there came a strange expectancy and tremor into the heart of the poetess, and she pressed the wet sheet of crumpled paper closer to her bosom, and turned to face the light. Through the spaces of the Long Wood of Barbrax there came a shining visitor, the Angel of the Presence, he who comes but once and stands a moment with a beckoning finger. Him she followed up through the wood.