"Lucky! Talent!" exclaimed Langford.

"I always understood literature was a lucrative pursuit."

"Pursuit,--yes;--but lucrative! Ye G.o.ds!

"You see, Ralston, I suffer with my thoughts until I relieve myself by getting them down as best I can on paper, then I bury them in my trunk along with their elder brothers. I know I ought to burn them, but I haven't the heart to murder my children born in such travail.

Some day, however, it will have to be done, otherwise they'll crowd their father-mother out of house and home."

"Don't you try to market your work?"

"I did once--many times once--but they would have none of my high-faluting flights, although as Captain Mayne Plunkett, the writer of penny dreadfuls for the consumption of England's budding pirates and cowpunchers, I am not without a following, and I have a steady contract for one per month at fifty dollars straight. To a New York girls' journal, I am not unkindly thought of as Aunt Christina in the Replies to the Love Lorn column,--five dollars per--."

He laughed reflectively.

"But don't you work?" asked Phil innocently.

"Work! Lord, isn't that work a-plenty?"

"Yes, but work that pays in real dollars and cents."

"Ah!" Langford's eyes swept the ceiling. "Meantime, I am what you might call a.s.sistant to the Government Agent. G.o.d knows how long he will suffer me. He is a real good sort, and doesn't expect too much for his money either in time or in ability. I knock about fifty dollars a month out of him when I work, and that, with the fifty with which my old dad so benevolently pensions me, together with fifty for every 'penny horrible' I write, I contrive to eke out a scanty living.

"You've got to work, too, Ralston; haven't you?"

"Work or starve!" answered Phil.

"I hate to think of any man having to work," mused Langford, "but if starve is the only alternative, why, I guess you've got to find a job.

Got anything in view?"

"No!"

"Particular about what you tackle?"

"Not at all!"

"All right! I've to be at the Court House at five o'clock. Kick your heels around this little burg for a few hours and I'll try to scare up something for you. But don't get into mischief."

He rose, knocked the ashes out of his pipe on the heel of his boot at the stove, and put on his hat.

He turned at the door.

"Say, Ralston! It won't be any pen-pushing job, mark you. You have to get your muscle up, for there's something I want you to do when you are good and fit."

"And what is that?"

"Tell you later. So long!"

A few minutes later Phil got his hat from the hall-rack and strolled leisurely out, taking the road down the hill toward the main street of the town.

He pa.s.sed a red brick building which bore the aristocratic t.i.tle on a large painted sign over the doorway, "Munic.i.p.al Hall." He looked at the windows. Hanging on one of them, in the inside, was a black card with gilt letters, "Mayor Brenchfield."

Phil's under lip shot out and his brow wrinkled. His hand travelled to his hip pocket, as a nervous man's does when he sees a sign in a railway station, "Beware of Pickpockets."

He swung on his heel and walked up the wooden steps into the main office, as calm and collected as could be.

"Is the Mayor in?" he asked one of the officials.

"Yes! Wish to see him? What name, please?"

"Oh, just tell him it's an old friend."

The office man went into the inner room and soon returned.

"He is very busy on some special work. Would you mind calling in again?"

"Anybody with him?"

"No!"

Phil brushed past the man and walked straight into the Mayor's office, closing the door behind him.

Brenchfield was sitting in an armchair, behind a desk, smoking a huge cigar and blowing clouds in the air; the very picture of munic.i.p.al overwork.

"Thought it might be you! Heard you were in town. Sit down, Phil!"

"Thanks, no!" returned Phil brusquely.

Brenchfield reached over, opened a cheque book, took up a pen, dipped it in an inkwell, turned his cigar savagely to a corner of his mouth and looked up at his visitor inquiringly.

"How much do you want?"

Phil smiled on him, half-pityingly. Physically, he was tremendously weak, but he despised the man before him so much that it gave him courage and strength.

"How much have you?" he asked.

"None of your d.a.m.ned business!"

"Oh!--I guess you've forgotten that our five years' partnership is up:--a pool and a fair divide, wasn't it? Share and share alike!

Well,--there's mine!"

He threw a few bills and a little silver on the table.

Brenchfield pushed back his chair.

"So that's your game, you poor miserable--you know the name!"

"Poor and miserable, all right,--like the fool I was. But I'm not a fool any more. I know you. I know the world just a little better than I did five years ago."