compels him to produce them as far as he is able, this
same urgent impulse forces him to complete his manuscript, and when
completed, to strain his utmost to give it actual life in the thoughts
and brains of the public.

The pressing want to produce is as wholly natural, as innate, as
independent of the individual's volition as the conceptive impulse
itself.

And it was thus with me.

I could not be said to wish to publish from this or that motive,
because of this, that, or the other. I was simply dominated by the
instinct to do so, which grew more and more urgent as it found no
gratification.

It had risen now rampant at this last rebuff, and it seemed to rage
about in my brain like a Bengal tiger in a net.

I walked up and down the long dining-room, backwards and forwards, from
the grate where the fire blazed to the glass-panelled sideboard at the
other end, where its reflection sparkled, yawning every now and then
from sheer nervous irritation. "Cursed, infernal nuisance!"

I had just muttered this when the door was pushed open, but the
enterer, on hearing my exclamation, promptly drew it to again, and
would have shut it, but that I caught the handle.

It was the butler.

"What do you want, Simmonds," I said.

"Nothing, sir. I was told to enquire if you was in."

"Well, I am."

"Yes, sir. Please, Mr. Hilton said was you ready for dinner?"

"Certainly; and, Simmonds, where's Nous?"

"Tied up, sir, in the stable."

"Tied up! Again! I gave orders he was never to be tied up!"

"Yes, sir; but please, sir, he was that dirty and muddy to go
scrimmaging over the house, and it's the ruination of the furniture--"

"The dog is not to be tied up," I interrupted.

"Have him let loose at once, and in future remember, if he comes in wet
and muddy, and chooses to lie on the drawing-room couch, let him."

The man disappeared, and I walked over to the hearth.

A minute or two later there was a scratching and whining outside the
door, and I went to it and let Nous in.

He bounded over me, licked my face furiously, and scratched
enthusiastically at my shirt front.

He was wet, and his fur laden with mud, as the butler had said, and my
clothes suffered from his demonstrativeness, but his feelings were of
more import than a dress-coat, and I would not have hurt them by
checking his greeting.

"Dear old boy," I said, taking the collar off with which he had been
chained up,--and just then my father came into th