ou had only told me more about your hero in
the first instance it might have been finished by now. You're so hazy in
your notions."

"I only want to give you the general notion of it--the knocking about
from place to place and the fighting and all that. Can't you fill in the
rest yourself? Make the hero save a girl on a pirate-galley and marry
her or do something."

"You're a really helpful collaborator. I suppose the hero went through
some few adventures before he married."

"Well then, make him a very artful card--a low sort of man--a sort
of political man who went about making treaties and breaking them--a
black-haired chap who hid behind the mast when the fighting began."

"But you said the other day that he was red-haired."

"I couldn't have. Make him black-haired of course. You've no
imagination."

Seeing that I had just discovered the entire principles upon which the
half-memory falsely called imagination is based, I felt entitled to
laugh, but forbore, for the sake of the tale.

"You're right. _You're_ the man with imagination. A black-haired chap in
a decked ship," I said.

"No, an open ship--like a big boat."

This was maddening.

"Your ship has been built and designed, closed and decked in; you said
so yourself," I protested.

"No, no, not that ship. That was open, or half decked because----. By
Jove you're right. You made me think of the hero as a red-haired chap.
Of course if he were red, the ship would be an open one with painted
sails."

Surely, I thought he would remember now that he had served in two
galleys at least--in a three-decked Greek one under the black-haired
"political man," and again in a Viking's open sea-serpent under the
man "red as a red bear" who went to Markland. The devil prompted me to
speak.

"Why, 'of course,' Charlie?" said I.

"I don't know. Are you making fun of me?"

The current was broken for the time being. I took up a notebook and
pretended to make many entries in it.

"It's a pleasure to work with an imaginative chap like yourself," I said
after a pause. "The way that you've brought out the character of the
hero is simply wonderful."

"Do you think so?" he answered, with a pleased flush. "I often tell
myself that there's more in me than my mo--than people think."

"There's an enormous amount in you."

"Then, won't you let me send an essay on The Ways of Bank Clerks to
Tit-Bits, and get the guinea prize?"

"That wasn't exactly what I meant, old fel