at last I looked up I gathered from his
expression that something serious had happened, so mournful was his face,
and yet so utterly ludicrous.

"Say, Hugh, I'm in the deuce of a mess," he announced.

"What's the matter?" I inquired.

He sank down on the table with a groan.

"It's Alonzo," he said.

Then I remembered the theme.

"What--what's he done?" I demanded.

"He says I must become a writer. Think of it, me a writer! He says I'm a
young Shakespeare, that I've been lazy and hid my light under a bushel!
He says he knows now what I can do, and if I don't keep up the quality,
he'll know the reason why, and write a personal letter to my father. Oh,
hell!"

In spite of his evident anguish, I was seized with a convulsive laughter.
Tom stood staring at me moodily.

"You think it's funny,--don't you? I guess it is, but what's going to
become of me? That's what I want to know. I've been in trouble before,
but never in any like this. And who got me into it? You!"

Here was gratitude!

"You've got to go on writing 'em, now." His voice became desperately
pleading. "Say, Hugh, old man, you can temper 'em down--temper 'em down
gradually. And by the end of the year, let's say, they'll be about normal
again."

He seemed actually shivering.

"The end of the year!" I cried, the predicament striking me for the first
time in its fulness. "Say, you've got a crust!"

"You'll do it, if I have to hold a gun over you," he announced grimly.

Mingled with my anxiety, which was real, was an exultation that would not
down. Nevertheless, the idea of developing Tom into a Shakespeare,--Tom,
who had not the slightest desire to be one I was appalling, besides
having in it an element of useless self-sacrifice from which I recoiled.
On the other hand, if Alonzo should discover that I had written his
theme, there were penalties I did not care to dwell upon .... With such a
cloud hanging over me I passed a restless night.

As luck would have it the very next evening in the level light under the
elms of the Square I beheld sauntering towards me a dapper figure which I
recognized as that of Mr. Cheyne himself. As I saluted him he gave me an
amused and most disconcerting glance; and when I was congratulating
myself that he had passed me he stopped.

"Fine weather for March, Paret," he observed.

"Yes, sir," I agreed in a strange voice.

"By the way," he remarked, contemplating the bare branches above our
heads, "that was an exce