t."

"What are you going to do; live on back royalties and clams?"

"I may have to live on the clams; my back royalties won't keep me very
long."

"Humph! I should think they might keep you a good while down here. You
must have something in the stocking. You can't have wasted very much in
riotous living on this sand-heap. What have you done with your money,
for the last ten years; been leading a double life?"

"I've found leading a single one hard enough. I have saved something, of
course. It isn't the money that worries me, Jim; I told you that. It's
myself; I'm no good. Every author, sometime or other, reaches the point
where he knows perfectly well he has done all the real work he can
ever do, that he has written himself out. That's what's the matter with
me--I'm written out."

Jim snorted. "For Heaven's sake, Kent Knowles," he demanded, "how old
are you?"

"I'm thirty-eight, according to the almanac, but--"

"Thirty-eight! Why, Thackeray wrote--"

"Drop it! I know when Thackeray wrote 'Vanity Fair' as well as you do.
I'm no Thackeray to begin with, and, besides, I am older at thirty-eight
than he was when he died--yes, older than he would have been if he had
lived twice as long. So far as feeling and all the rest of it go, I'm a
second Methusaleh."

"My soul! hear the man! And I'm forty-two myself. Well, Grandpa, what do
you expect me to do; get you admitted to the Old Man's Home?"

"I expect--" I began, "I expect--" and I concluded with the lame
admission that I didn't expect him to do anything. It was up to me to do
whatever must be done, I imagined.

He smiled grimly.

"Glad your senility has not affected that remnant of your common-sense,"
he declared. "You're dead right, my boy; it IS up to you. You ought to
be ashamed of yourself."

"I am, but that doesn't help me a whole lot."

"Nothing will help you as long as you think and speak as you have this
morning. See here, Kent! answer me a question or two, will you? They may
be personal questions, but will you answer them?"

"I guess so. There has been what a disinterested listener might call
a slightly personal flavor to your remarks so far. Do your worst. Fire
away."

"All right. You've lived in Bayport ten years or so, I know that. What
have you done in all that time--besides write?"

"Well, I've continued to live."

"Doubted. You've continued to exist; but how? I've been here before.
This isn't my first visit, by a good deal. Each time I