My signed work had run out. For two weeks nothing had been printed over my signature. So far no comment had been raised. But it was only a question of days. But then one afternoon it all came right. It was like this.

I was sitting eating my lunch at Eliza's in Birchin Lane. Twenty minutes was the official allowance for the meal, and I took my twenty minutes at two o'clock. The _St. Stephen's Gazette_ was lying near me. I picked it up. Anything to distract my thoughts from the trouble to come. That was how I felt. Reading mechanically the front page, I saw a poem, and started violently. This was the poem:--

A CRY

Hands at the tiller to steer:
A star in the murky sky:
Water and waste of mere:
Whither and why?

Sting of absorbent night:
Journey of weal or woe:
And overhead the light:
We go--we go?

Darkness a mortal's part,
Mortals of whom we are:
Come to a mortal's heart,
Immortal star.

_Thos. Blake._
_June 6th._

"Rummy, very rummy," I exclaimed. The poem was dated yesterday. Had Mr. Cloyster, then, continued to work his system with Thomas Blake to the exclusion of the Reverend and myself?

Still worrying over the thing, I turned over the pages of the paper until I chanced to see the following paragraph:

LITERARY GOSSIP

Few will be surprised to learn that the Rev. John Hatton intends to publish another novel in the immediate future. Mr. Hatton's first book, _When It Was Lurid_, created little less than a furore. The work on which he is now engaged, which will bear the title of _The Browns of Brixton_, is a tender sketch of English domesticity. This new vein of Mr. Hatton's will, doubtless, be distinguished by the naturalness of dialogue and sanity of characterisation of his first novel. Messrs. Prodder and Way are to publish it in the autumn.

"He's running the Reverend again, is he?" said I to myself. "And I'm the only one left out. It's a bit thick."

That night I wrote to Blake and to the Reverend asking whether they had been taken on afresh, and if so, couldn't I get a look in, as things were pretty serious.

The Reverend's reply arrived first:

THE TEMPLE, _June 7th._

_Dear Price_,--

As you have seen, I am hard at work at my new novel. The leisure of a novelist is so scanty that I know you'll forgive my writing only a line. I am in no way associated with James Orlebar Cloyster, nor do I wish to be. Rather I would forget his very existence.

You are aware of the interests which I have at heart: social reform, the education of the submerged, the physical needs of the young--there is no necessity for me to enumerate my ideals further. To get quick returns from philanthropy, to put remedial organisation into speedy working order wants capital. Cloyster's system was one way of obtaining some of it, but when that failed I had to look out for another. I'm glad I helped in the system, for it made me realise how large an income a novelist can obtain. I'm glad it failed because its failure suggested that I should try to get for myself those vast sums which I had been getting for the selfish purse of an already wealthy man. Unconsciously, he has played into my hands. I read his books before I signed them, and I find that I have thoroughly absorbed those tricks of his, of style and construction, which opened the public's coffers to him. _The Browns of Brixton_ will eclipse anything that Cloyster has previously done, for this reason, that it will out-Cloyster Cloyster. It is Cloyster with improvements.