difficulty for a time in comprehending; and that is why one
sometimes meets to-day worshippers of Kail Yard literature wandering
disconsolately about St. Dunstan-in-the-West, seeking Rolls Court,
discomforted because it is no more. But that is the history of the "Wee
Laddie," and this of the beginnings of William Clodd, now Sir William
Clodd, Bart., M.P., proprietor of a quarter of a hundred newspapers,
magazines, and journals: "Truthful Billy" we called him then.

No one can say of Clodd that he did not deserve whatever profit his
unlicensed lunatic asylum may have brought him. A kindly man was William
Clodd when indulgence in sentiment did not interfere with business.

"There's no harm in him," asserted Mr. Clodd, talking the matter over
with one Mr. Peter Hope, journalist, of Gough Square. "He's just a bit
dotty, same as you or I might get with nothing to do and all day long to
do it in. Kid's play, that's all it is. The best plan, I find, is to
treat it as a game and take a hand in it. Last week he wanted to be a
lion. I could see that was going to be awkward, he roaring for raw meat
and thinking to prowl about the house at night. Well, I didn't nag
him--that's no good. I just got a gun and shot him. He's a duck now,
and I'm trying to keep him one: sits for an hour beside his bath on three
china eggs I've bought him. Wish some of the sane ones were as little
trouble."

The summer came again. Clodd and his Lunatic, a mild-looking little old
gentleman of somewhat clerical cut, one often met with arm-in-arm,
bustling about the streets and courts that were the scene of Clodd's rent-
collecting labours. Their evident attachment to one another was
curiously displayed; Clodd, the young and red-haired, treating his white-
haired, withered companion with fatherly indulgence; the other glancing
up from time to time into Clodd's face with a winning expression of
infantile affection.

"We are getting much better," explained Clodd, the pair meeting Peter
Hope one day at the corner of Newcastle Street. "The more we are out in
the open air, and the more we have to do and think about, the better for
us--eh?"

The mild-looking little old gentleman hanging on Clodd's arm smiled and
nodded.

"Between ourselves," added Mr. Clodd, sinking his voice, "we are not half
as foolish as folks think we are."

Peter Hope went his way down the Strand.

"Clodd's a good sort--a good sort," said Peter Hope, who, having in his