She has remarked him when he was quite a little man, and used to bring his father's beer of a Sunday.

Out of her novels he has taught himself to read, dull boy at the day-school though he was, and always the last in his class, there.

Hours, happy hours, has he spent cowering behind her counter, or hugging her books under his pinafore when he had leave to carry them home.

The whole library has passed through his hands, his long, lean, tremulous hands, and under his eager eyes.

He has made illustrations to every one of those books, and been frightened at his own pictures of Manfroni or the One-handed Monk, Abellino the Terrific Bravo of Venice, and Rinaldo Rinaldini Captain of Robbers.