it--quahaug?"

"No, I'm the only human clam in this neighborhood."

He did not say any more, nor did I. My fit of the blues was on again
and his silence on the subject in which I was interested, my work and my
future, troubled me and made me more despondent. I began to lose faith
in the "prescription" which he had promised so emphatically. How could
he, or anyone else, help me? No one could write my stories but myself,
and I knew, only too well, that I could not write them.

The only mail matter in our box was a letter addressed to Hephzibah.
I forgot it until after supper and then I gave it to her. Jim retired
early; the salt air made him sleepy, so he said, and he went upstairs
shortly after nine. He had not mentioned our talk of the morning, nor
did he until I left him at the door of his room. Then he said:

"Kent, I've got one of the answers to your conundrum. I've diagnosed one
of your troubles. You're blind."

"Blind?"

"Yes, blind. Or, if not blind altogether you're suffering from the worse
case of far-sightedness I ever saw. All your literary--we'll call it
that for compliment's sake--all your literary life you've spent writing
about people and things so far off you don't know anything about them.
You and your dukes and your earls and your titled ladies! What do you
know of that crowd? You never saw a lord in your life. Why don't you
write of something near by, something or somebody you are acquainted
with?"

"Acquainted with! You're crazy, man. What am I acquainted with, except
this house, and myself and my books and--and Bayport?"

"That's enough. Why, there is material in that gang at the post-office
to make a dozen books. Write about them."

"Tut! tut! tut! You ARE crazy. What shall I write; the life of Ase
Tidditt in four volumes, beginning with 'I swan to man' and ending with
'By godfrey'?"

"You might do worse. If the book were as funny as its hero I'd undertake
to sell a few copies."

"Funny! _I_ couldn't write a funny book."

"Not an intentionally funny one, you mean. But there! There's no use to
talk to you."

"There is not, if you talk like an imbecile. Is this your brilliant
'prescription'?"

"No. It might be; it would be, if you would take it, but you won't--not
now. You need something else first and I'll give it to you. But I'll
tell you this, and I mean it: Downstairs, in that dining-room of yours,
there's one mighty good story, at least."

"The dining-room? A story in the din