I
would sell my soul to a publisher for fifty pounds a year. Anything to
get my foot on the lowest rung of the ladder! Anything to help me on
the way to freedom!

"If you could see me, speak to me, help me in any way! Believe me, I
do not wish to force my personality on you. I do not want you to give
me any material thing. I only beg of you to aid me in asserting my
claim on life by telling how I may win bread.

"I should be deeply grateful for a word from you. In any case, pardon
this intrusion. Yours, etc., Morgan Druce."

* * * * *

Ingram drew a long breath and threw the sheets on to the table.

"Have I read it nicely?" he asked.

"And I wrote that--to you, Robert Ingram!" exclaimed Morgan, brokenly.

"You did," said Ingram, quietly. "And you know what the sequel was."

"You were moved by my appeal. You came to seek me out."

"Well, your letter interested me. It was not the letter of a duffer or
a swindler--the sort of thing you can tell by its ornate pompousness;
and it just caught me when I was somewhat bored by things, so that I
rather welcomed it as an excitement. I expected to find you lodging in
some miserable cottage--a Chatterton in a garret. I came to bring food
to the hungry. Instead----"

"You found me living in a palace standing in a fine park, with no lack
of loaves and fishes, of milk and honey."

"It was the greatest surprise of my life. When I could no longer doubt
that the only people called Druce in the neighbourhood lived in the
magnificent Elizabethan mansion, whose name was that of the supposed
cottage from which you addressed your letter, I began to think the
family kept a skeleton in one of the cupboards. In plain
language----"

"You thought one of the members of the family must be a lunatic."

"Anyway, the champagne was first-class, the cigars were worth
half-a-crown apiece," said Ingram, laughing.

"And when you had gone into the matter you thought that if I wasn't
quite a lunatic, I was not far short of one for disagreeing with my
father."

"Frankly, I did."

"You never really sympathised."

"I did--all the time I conceived of you as a Chatterton."

"A palace is worse than a garret," asserted Morgan, "under the
conditions in which I lived."

"Bah! You know nothing about garrets. And, as I pointed out to you,
even if, in spite of the competition, you did sell your soul to a
publisher for fifty pounds a year, he'd take care to stick to i