irst instance?" the doctor asked.

"I hardly know myself," Jimmy answered. "I wanted some quiet place, and
someone--I have never been able to remember who it was--had once
mentioned it to me as the ideal spot. The name had stuck in my memory,
so I came down here on chance and liked it from the first. I must say,
though, I've found it dull at times."

"No place is dull when you know it well enough," the old man retorted.
"Yes, I mean it. You, as a writer, ought to understand that. It's only
dull if you make it so for yourself by being out of sympathy with its
people.... How's the book getting on?"

"Pretty well, I believe. The publishers say they're quite satisfied with
it for a first novel. One doesn't expect to make a big splash at the
start."

"Some never make a splash at all, even though they do good work. I knew
one." The doctor shook his head sadly. "He lived in this town, only a
few doors from here. He used to write scientific books, and was admitted
to be the best man in England on his own subject; yet he got more and
more hard up all the time. I don't know what he and his daughter really
did live on for the last year or two. It ended in something very like a
tragedy. Ah, it was a bad business, a terrible business," and he sighed
heavily.

Jimmy's lips seemed suddenly to have become dry and hard; but his voice
was almost normal as he asked, "What was it, doctor?"

The old man began to fill a pipe with rather exaggerated care. "It was
the daughter," he answered, without looking up. "She was a sweet girl,
the best, most unselfish girl I ever knew; but curiously young in many
ways, dangerously young--you understand? She had been brought up alone
with him--no woman to tell her things. That's bad. Confound it all,
sir,"--he raised his voice in a sudden explosion of wrath,--"parents
have no right to keep their girls in ignorance. It's criminal
negligence; at least it was in this case. They were desperately poor,
and he was dying; wanted all sorts of things." He paused again and made
a show of lighting his pipe, but the match burnt out ineffectually, then
he went on. "They hadn't a shilling, and none of the tradesmen would
trust them. And a man, a young scoundrel belonging to this very town,
offered her ten pounds to go away with him for a couple of days, showed
her the gold.... What was that?" he demanded quickly as Jimmy's pipe
stem snapped suddenly in his hands.

Jimmy himself had shifted slightly, so that th