BOOK V. THE BAIT IS SEIZEDThey sat, gazing down the slope of the little vale. She was turning idly the pages of the book, and she read to him—
“Lovely all times she lies,lovely to-night!— Only, methinks, some loss of habit’s power Befalls me wandering through this upland dim. Once pass’d I blindfold here, at any hour; Now seldom come I, since I came with him.”
“It was here we first read the poem,” he said. “Every spot brings back some line of it.”
“Even the old oak-tree where we used to sit,” she smiled—
“Hear it, O Thyrsis, still our tree is there!”
Section 1. Thyrsis was half hoping that the next publisher would decline the manuscript; and hewas only mildly stirred when he got a letter saying that although the publisher could not make an offer for the book, one of his readers was so
