.

Pinkerton was in the waiting-room, feverishly jotting in his
pocket-book. As he saw me enter, he sprang up, and I declare the tears
were trickling on his cheeks.

"My dear boy," he cried, "I can never forgive myself, and you can never
forgive me. Never mind, I did it for the best. And how nobly you clung
on! I dreaded we should have had to return the money at the doors."

"It would have been more honest if we had," said I.

The pressmen followed me, Harry Miller in the front ranks; and I was
amazed to find them, on the whole, a pleasant set of lads, probably more
sinned against than sinning, and even Harry Miller apparently a
gentleman. I had in oysters and champagne--for the receipts were
excellent--and, being in a high state of nervous tension, kept the table
in a roar. Indeed, I was never in my life so well inspired as when I
described my vigil over Harry Miller's literature or the series of my
emotions as I faced the audience. The lads vowed I was the soul of good
company and the prince of lecturers; and--so wonderful an institution
is the popular press--if you had seen the notices next day in all the
papers you must have supposed my evening's entertainment an unqualified
success.

I was in excellent spirits when I returned home that night, but the
miserable Pinkerton sorrowed for us both.

"O, Loudon," he said, "I shall never forgive myself. When I saw you
didn't catch on to the idea of the lecture, I should have given it
myself!"

CHAPTER VII

IRONS IN THE FIRE

_Opes Strepitumque_

The food of the body differs not so greatly for the fool or the sage,
the elephant or the cock-sparrow; and similar chemical elements,
variously disguised, support all mortals. A brief study of Pinkerton in
his new setting convinced me of a kindred truth about that other and
mental digestion by which we extract what is called "fun for our money"
out of life. In the same spirit as a schoolboy deep in Mayne Reid
handles a dummy gun and crawls among imaginary forests, Pinkerton sped
through Kearney Street upon his daily business, representing to himself
a highly coloured part in life's performance, and happy for hours if he
should have chanced to brush against a millionaire. Reality was his
romance; he gloried to be thus engaged: he wallowed in his business.
Suppose a man to dig up a galleon on the Coromandel coast, his rakish
schooner keeping the while an offing under easy sail, and he, by the
blaze of a great fi