th, I've got a
conviction that I'll write something great if I don't go to the devil
first. Then, there's Horace Jewdwine."

Maddox hardened his face; he had been told not to talk about Jewdwine,
and he wasn't going to.

"If I go to the devil, he won't go with me. Say what you like, he's a
saint compared with you and me. If he doesn't understand Songs of
Confession, it's because he's never had anything to confess. The third
reason--if I go to the devil--no, I can't tell you the third reason.
It's also the reason why I wear my magnificent trousers. All the
reasons amount to that. If I go to the devil I can't wear those
trousers. Never, Maddox, believe me, never again."

Maddox smiled, and, unlike Maddox, he said one thing and thought
another.

What he said was. "Your trousers, Ricky-ticky, are of too heavenly a
pattern for this wicked world. They are such stuff as dreams are made
of, and their little life--" he paused. What he thought was--"Your
way, Ricky-ticky, is deuced hard for the likes of me. But I'll go with
you as far as I can, my son."

Under the stars they looked into each other's faces and they knew
themselves aright.

CHAPTER XLIV

Jewdwine made up for the coldness of his published utterances by the
fervour of his secret counsel. His advice to Rickman was, "Beware of
the friendship of little men."

This Rickman understood to be a reflection on Maddox's position in the
world of letters. He did not care a rap about Maddox's position; but
there were moments when it was borne in upon him that Maddox was a
bigger man even than Horace Jewdwine, that his reckless manner poorly
disguised a deeper insight and a sounder judgement. His work on _The
Planet_ proved it every day. And though for himself he could have
desired a somewhat discreeter champion, he had the highest opinion of
his friend's courage in standing up for him when there was absolutely
nothing to be gained by it. He had every reason therefore to be
attached to Maddox.

But it was true enough that he knew too many little men; men who were
at home in that house of bondage from which he was for ever longing to
escape; men whom he had met as he had described, sitting contentedly
on the dirty back-stairs of Fleet Street; men who in rubbing shoulders
with each other in that crowded thoroughfare had had to allow for a
great deal of what Maddox called wear and tear. Those little men had
remained invincibly, imperturbably friendly. They knew p