ered about uncertainly for a few
minutes and then curled up on a newspaper and went to sleep.

He slept all evening.

* * * * *

"He has beaten us again," Jean Lanni told Judy Stokes resignedly when
she arrived at his studio the following evening. He watched Droozle
fascinatedly as the snake moved his restless tail over the margins of
newspapers spread on the floor. "He doesn't know yet that I know. I
discovered the fraud only by the merest accident."

"He isn't writing?" she asked, perusing the newspapers for signs of
Droozle's elegant script.

"He most certainly is."

"Where?"

"Look at him!" Jean exclaimed, ignoring her question. "He's doing it
again!"

Droozle had ceased wriggling for the moment and lay there shaking
violently, as though he had malaria. Then the paroxysm passed and he
took up his restless movements again.

"The poor genius," mourned Judy. "He must be sick with frustration."

"Sick, my eye! That snake has learned to centrifuge part of his blood
while it is in his body, so that the hemoglobin is separated out. The
result is--invisible ink!"

"Why, I'll tell that Droozle off!" raved Judy. "Here I sat feeling sorry
for the little crumb!"

Droozle did not mind. While she ranted, he brazenly began writing in
visible ink once more.

"How did you catch him at it?" she asked.

"I used a piece of his newspaper to pick up a hot saw blade. The heat
turned the invisible ink brown."

"Droozle," said the girl passionately, looking down at the writer, "you
know your master is in great need of funds. _Where_ is your sense of
loyalty and self-sacrifice for the one who has cared for you?"

Droozle wrote poetically, "Is there Joy or any other good thing in
Abnegation? Is there Beauty in Sacrifice? What Handsome purpose do these
serve a being in his race with Time? His Days will soon be spent and
they will come no more; thus my Criterion: Is This the most Joy
gathering, Awareness touching, Beauty sensing act of which he is
capable? None other is worthy of his time!"

"Men are not so selfish," objected Jean.

"I am not a man," wrote Droozle simply.

Jean turned staunchly to the girl. "Judy, he has convinced me. I have
been wrong about him. From now on _he can write whatever he likes_!"

"Good-by to our hopes then?"

"For the present, yes," assented Jean stoically, as he brought fresh
sheets of paper from his desk for Droozle. "My landscapes might begin to
sell a