ound me at Petworth, in Sussex, lodging over a clockmaker's shop
that looked out upon the Market Square. Petworth is quiet; and at that
time I knew scarcely a soul in the place; but lovely scenery lies all
around it, and on a hot afternoon you may do worse than stretch yourself
on the slopes above the weald and smoke and do nothing. There is one
small common in particular, close to the monument at the top of the
park, and just outside the park wall, where I spent many hours looking
across the blue country to Blackdown, and lazily making up my mind about
the novel. In the end--it was some time in September--I called on the
local stationer and bought a large heap of superior foolscap.

[Illustration: FOWEY GRAMMAR SCHOOL CREW AND MR. QUILLER COUCH]

A travelling waxwork company was unpacking its caravan in the square
outside my window on the morning when I pulled in my chair and
light-heartedly wrote 'Dead Man's Rock (a Romance), by Q.,' at the top
of the first sheet of foolscap. The initial was my old initial of the
_Oxford Magazine_ verses, and the title had been settled on for some
time before. Staying with some friends on the Cornish coast, I had been
taken to a picnic, or some similar function, on a beach, where they
showed me a pillar-shaped rock, standing boldly up from the sands, and
veined with curious red streaks resembling bloodstains. 'I want a story
written about that rock,' a lady of the party had said; 'something
really blood-thirsty. "Slaughter Rock" might do for the name.' But my
title was really borrowed from the Dodman, locally called Deadman, a
promontory east of Falmouth, between Veryan and St. Austell bays.

I had covered two pages of foolscap before the brass band of the waxwork
show struck up and drove me out of doors and along the road that leads
to the railway station--the only dull road around Petworth, and chosen
now for that very reason. A good half of that morning's work was
afterwards torn up; but I felt at the time that the enterprise was going
well. I had written slowly, but easily; and, of course, believed that I
had found my vocation, and would always be able to write easily--most
vain delusion! For in six years and a half I have recaptured the fluency
of that morning not half-a-dozen times. Still, I continued to take a
lively interest in my story, and wrote at it very steadily, finishing
Book I. before my return to Oxford. It surprised me, though, that, for
all my interest in it, the s