o duelling in his memory, though he was sure
they had been made and written; but they were meant to say that all
labour conceived and executed in a land of fire should be remodelled
in the land of frost at the risk of being cast away in its passage from
one to the other. This in plain English meant the union of hot zeal and
cold diligence, which is a worthy recipe for any worker in any craft It
served Paul's turn for six prodigious weeks, from the rising of the
sun until long after the going down of the same. The book was done in a
quarter of the time he had apportioned to it. For six weeks the forces
of every waking minute had strained fiercely forward to one purpose, and
at seven o'clock on an autumn Friday he wrote the words 'The End,'
and, looking up, saw the sunlight in dazzling strips between the green
painted laths of the blind, and found that his lamp was pale. He drew
up the blind and opened the window, and the sweet air bathed his head.
There was a deep sadness in his heart, and when he arose and by chance
saw his face in the glass it was the face of a ghost If the halest of
young men will live in alternations of frost and fire for six weeks on
end, he must expect to pay for it.

Paul paid dearly in lassitude, and broken sleep, and loss of appetite,
and afterwards in six weeks of idle waiting in poverty, for there was
no work or power of thought left in him for the time. He pawned the
dressing-case old Darco had given him and the dress-suit which he had
not worn for four years, and he had his meals, such as they were, at a
cabman's restaurant, and his last penny went, and tobacco famine set in;
and his landlord, who was a maudlin man with a cultured turn for drink,
would come in at night to his sitting-room and cry, and say that the
water-rates were going to cut the supply; and the butcher had said, 'No
more credit after Saturday.'

And whilst he was thus agreeably engaged on one occasion a knock came to
the door, and a slattern slavey came in with a plate in her hand, and on
the plate a wet and flabby oblong something crusted with dirt and slime.

'I can't quite make it out, sir,'said the slavey, 'but I think as this
is a letter, and it hasn't been opened, sir, and I fancy it's addressed
to you.'

And within the slimy envelope was a soaked letter, in which the ink had
so run as to leave it scarcely legible, and being diligently pored upon,
the letter was found to indicate that the recipient of the story ha