ill at the reading
of another man's story, a night of insomnia, and resolution was in
tatters, and shortly thereafter Calmar Bye's pencil would be coursing
with redoubled vigor over a sheet of virgin paper.

To be sure, Calmar did other things besides write. Being a normal man
with a normal appetite, he could not successfully evade the demands of
animal existence, and when his finances became unbearably low, he
would proceed to their improvement by whatever means came first to
hand. Book-keeping, clerical work, stenography--anything was grist for
his mill at such times, and for a period he would work without rest.
No better assistant could be found anywhere--until he had satisfied
his few creditors and established a small surplus of his own. Then,
presto, change!--and on the surface reappeared Bye, the long, slender,
blue-eyed, dreaming, dawdling, irresponsible writer.

Being what he was, the tenor of Calmar's life was markedly uneven. At
times the lust to write, the spirit of inspiration, as he would have
explained to himself in the privacy of his own study, would come upon
him strong, and for hours or days life would be a joyous thing, his
fellow-men dear brothers of a happy family, the obvious unhappiness
and injustice about him not reality, but mere comedy being enacted for
his particular delectation.

Then at last, his work finished, would come inevitable reaction. The
product of his hand and brain, completed, seemed inadequate and
commonplace. He would smile grimly as with dogged persistence he
started this latest child of his fancy out along the trail so thickly
bestrewn with the skeletons of elder offspring. In measure, as
badinage had previously passed him harmlessly by, it now cut deeply.
No one in the entire town thought him a more complete failure than he
considered himself. Skies, from being sunny, grew suddenly sodden; not
a tenement or alley but thrust obtrusively forward its tale of
misery.

"Think of me," he confided to his friend Bob Wilson one evening as
during his transit through a particularly dismal slough of despond
they in company were busily engaged in blazing the trail with empty
bottles; "One such as I, a man of thirty and of good health, without a
dollar or the prospect of a dollar, an income or the prospect of an
income, a home or the prospect of a home, following a cold scent like
the one I am now on!" He snapped his finger against the rim of his
thin drinking glass until it rang merri