Blanfield,'" he added.

"Indeed!" I said. I had never been able to read "Blanfield." "Indeed,
ah, yes--of course."

There was an awkward pause.

"The whiskey will be here in a minute," he said, suddenly. "I don't have
it in when Whatnot's here. He's the Rector, you know; a great temperance
man. When we've had a--a modest quencher--we'll get to business."

"Oh," I said, "your letters really meant--"

"Of course," he answered. "Oh, here's the whiskey. Well now, Fox was
down here the other night. You know Fox, of course?"

"Didn't he start the rag called--?"

"Yes, yes," Callan answered, hastily, "he's been very successful in
launching papers. Now he's trying his hand with a new one. He's any
amount of backers--big names, you know. He's to run my next as a
_feuilleton_. This--this venture is to be rather more serious in tone
than any that he's done hitherto. You understand?"

"Why, yes," I said; "but I don't see where I come in."

Callan took a meditative sip of whiskey, added a little more water, a
little more whiskey, and then found the mixture to his liking.

"You see," he said, "Fox got a letter here to say that Wilkinson had
died suddenly--some affection of the heart. Wilkinson was to have
written a series of personal articles on prominent people. Well, Fox was
nonplussed and I put in a word for you."

"I'm sure I'm much--" I began.

"Not at all, not at all," Callan interrupted, blandly. "I've known you
and you've known me for a number of years."

A sudden picture danced before my eyes--the portrait of the Callan of
the old days--the fawning, shady individual, with the seedy clothes, the
furtive eyes and the obliging manners.

"Why, yes," I said; "but I don't see that that gives me any claim."

Callan cleared his throat.

"The lapse of time," he said in his grand manner, "rivets what we may
call the bands of association."

He paused to inscribe this sentence on the tablets of his memory. It
would be dragged in--to form a purple patch--in his new serial.

"You see," he went on, "I've written a good deal of autobiographical
matter and it would verge upon self-advertisement to do more. You know
how much I dislike _that_. So I showed Fox your sketch in the
_Kensington_."

"The Jenkins story?" I said. "How did you come to see it?"

"Then send me the _Kensington_," he answered. There was a touch of
sourness in his tone, and I remembered that the _Kensington_ I had seen
had been ballasted with seven