the check should happen to be large
enough. Anyway, we don't do business with a bank because we like the
owner of the concern. Oh, I didn't tell you that we have an account
there already. We have about two hundred and fifty dollars over there
and we don't owe a cent."

"Good!" Lyman cried, not because of the money, but that Warren had
broken the ice.

"Good; I should say it is. I call it glorious. And it has come mainly
through you. Why, when you came in I was still bleeding under the
heel, you know."

"It has been your business management and economy, Warren. I have done
nothing but scribble at odd times--I have played and you have worked."

"That's all right."

"No, it isn't all right. Whatever success may come to this paper
belongs to you. What there is already has flowed through the channel
of your energy, and I am not going to claim half the profits. The
plant is yours, not mine. Without you the paper could not have lived a
week."

"We'll fix that all right. But say, isn't it terrible to wait. I don't
mind work, but I hate to wait, and I ought not to go out yonder again
before day after tomorrow."

"What, ought not to go before day after tomorrow! You ought not to go
before next week."

"Oh, come, now, old man, don't say that. This thing of waiting is
awful. I think I could stand to be hanged if they'd do it at once, but
the waiting would put me out. I never could wait. And besides I don't
believe in it. One day I saw an old man at a soldiers' home and I
asked him concerning his prospects and he said that he was waiting,
and when I asked him what for, he said, 'to die.' And then I couldn't
help but ask him what he was going to do then. I don't believe in
waiting for anything; my idea is to go to it at once."

"Yes, that's all very well; but the old soldier was right after all,
for life is but waiting for death."

"No," said Warren, "life is a constant fight against death, and we
don't wait so long if we are fighting. If I thought as you do, I
couldn't wait--I'd have to go out and hunt up death at once. I reckon
you are low-spirited today. I'm glad I'm not a writer, Lyman. Writing
saps all a man's spirit and leaves him no nourishment."

"I have always regarded the necessity to write as a sad infliction,"
Lyman replied. "A man steals from himself his most secret beliefs and
emotions and puts them in the mouth of his characters. He is a sham."

"You ain't, old fellow."

"I am a fraud. Where are you g