Miss Cora Dobbs was as good as her word. She looked in again; indeed she formed quite a habit of looking into the shop of Elihu Rudge, bookseller, whenever she was passing. This seemed to work out on an average at one morning a week. Her reminiscences could hardly have induced this friendliness because, strange to say, she never mentioned them again.

On a first consideration, it seemed more likely due to her deep interest in the book Mr. Harper was writing, of which her aunt had told her. Whenever Miss Dobbs looked in she never failed to ask, "How is it going today?" and she declared she would not be satisfied until a chapter had been read to her.

Mr. Harper was rather embarrassed by the attentions of Miss Dobbs. He was a very shy young man, and in regard to his new and strange and sometimes extremely painful labors he was unreasonably silent. But so determined was the interest of Miss Dobbs that in the end Mr. Harper yielded to its pressure. At last he let her see the manuscript. But even that did not content her. She was set, it seemed, on having some of the choicest passages read aloud by the author when there was no one in the shop.

In a way the determination of Miss Dobbs was rather a thorn. Yet it would have been idle and ungracious for Mr. Harper to pretend that he was not flattered by this remarkable solicitude for the story of Dick Smith and the brigantine Excelsior. He was very flattered indeed. For one thing, Miss Dobbs was Miss Dobbs in a way that Miss Foldal had never been Miss Foldal. She was a force in the way that Ginger was; her elegance was positive, it meant something. She had a subtle air of "being out for blood," just as Ginger had when they had paid their first never-to-be-forgotten visit to Blackhampton. Deep in his heart the Sailor was a little afraid of Miss Cora Dobbs. Yet he did not know why he should be. She was extraordinarily agreeable. No one could have been pleasanter to talk to; she was by far the wittiest and most amusing lady he had ever met; it was impossible not to like her immensely; but already a subtle instinct told him to beware.

As for Miss Dobbs, her state of mind would be difficult to render. Just as Mr. Harper was very simple, Miss Dobbs was extremely complex. In the first place, there seemed no particular reason why she should have come into the shop at all. It may have been curiosity. Perhaps her aunt had aroused it by the statement that Mr. Rudge had "set up a nice-looking boy as wrote books," and it may have been that the bearing of the nice-looking boy gave warrant for a continuance of Miss Dobbs' friendly regard.

On the other hand, it may have been the nature of Mr. Harper's calling which inspired these punctual attentions. It certainly had possibilities. Among the friends of Miss Dobbs was a certain Mr. Albert Hobson who was reputed to earn several thousands a year by his pen. Again, it may have been the statement of her aunt that the young man "had follered the sea and had a nest-egg put by." Or again it may have been the young man himself who appealed to her. His clean simplicity of mind and of mansion may have had a morbid attraction for a complexity that was pathological. Of these hypotheses the last may seem least probable, but the motives of a Miss Cora Dobbs defy analysis; and in a world in which nothing is absolute she is perhaps entitled to the benefit of any doubt that may arise concerning them.

In spite of Miss Dobbs, whose attentions for the present were confined to a few minutes one morning a week, the story of Dick Smith began to make excellent progress. All the same it was uphill work. The Sailor was a very clumsy craftsman using the queerest of tools, but oddly enough he had a remarkable faculty of concentration.

At last came the day when the final chapter was written. And a proud day it was. In spite of many defeats and misgivings, he was able at three o'clock of a summer morning to write the magic words, "The End." Yet it was far from being the end of his labors. He little knew that he had merely come to Mount Pisgah, and that for many days he must be content with no more than a glimpse of the Promised Land.

In telling the story of his early years the Sailor had no particular object in view. Certain mysterious forces were craving expression. Such a task had not been undertaken at the call of ambition. But now it was done ambition found a part to play.

On the very morning the story was finished, by an odd chance Miss Dobbs came into the shop. In answer to her invariable, "Well, what of it?" she was gravely informed that the end had been reached.

"My! you've been going some, Mr. R. L. Stevenson. Run along and fetch the last chapter and read it to me and then I'll tell you honestly whether I think it's as good as Bert Hobson."

Miss Dobbs had the habit of command. Therefore Chapter the Last, telling of the hero's miraculous deliverance from the Island of San Pedro, was at once produced. Moreover, it was read to her with naïf sincerity in a gentle voice.

"Hot stuff!" Miss Dobbs dexterously concealed a yawn with a dingy white glove. "It's It."

The author blushed with pleasure, although he could hardly believe the story was as good as all that.

"And what are you going to do with it now you've written it?"

To her intense surprise it had not occurred to him to do anything with it.

"Oh, but that's potty. That's merely potty. Of course you are going to bring it out as a book."

The author had not thought of doing so.

"Anyhow, it is just the thing for a magazine."

Even a magazine had not entered his mind.

"What are you going to do with it, then?" demanded Miss Dobbs, with growing incredulity.

This was a question Mr. Harper was unable to answer.

"You are going to do nothing with it?" gasped Miss Dobbs.

"No."

"But it's 'some' story, I assure you it is. If you send it to the Rotunda or the Covent Garden it may mean big money."

Quite absurdly the financial aspect had not presented itself.

"Well, you're potty," said Miss Dobbs, with despondency. "Don't you know that Bert Hobson, who writes those stories for the Rotunda, makes his thousands a year?"

Mr. Harper, who had never heard of Bert Hobson or of the Rotunda, seemed greatly surprised.

"Why, you are as green as green," said Miss Dobbs reproachfully. "It's such a nugget of thrills, you ought to see that it gets published. You ought really."

But in spite of her conviction it was some time before he felt able to take her advice. Such unpractical reluctance on the part of genius gave her pain. It seemed to lower its value. He must be a genius to have written a book, but it was a great pity that he should confirm the world's estimate of genius by behaving like one.

Why had he taken so much trouble if he was not going to get a nice fat check out of it?

He had written it because he felt he must.

It's a very sloppy reason, was the unexpressed opinion of Miss Dobbs.

After such a hopeless admission on the part of the young man with the queer eyes, Miss Dobbs felt so hurt that she did not appear in the shop for three weeks. And when at last she came again, she learned that the story of Dick Smith and the brigantine Excelsior was still in its drawer and had yet to be seen by anyone.

"You beat Banagher," said Miss Dobbs. And then she suddenly exclaimed, "Look here, Mr. Harper, give me that story and I'll send it myself to the Rotunda."

Very gently and politely, but quite firmly, Mr. Harper declined to do so. But in order to appease Miss Dobbs, who was inclined to make this refusal a personal matter, he solemnly promised that he would send it to the Rotunda himself, or some other magazine.

Henry Harper took a sudden resolve that night to send the story to the home of its only true begetter, Brown's Magazine. Why he chose that periodical in preference to the Rotunda was more than he could say. It may have been a feeling of reverence for the dilapidated Volume CXLI with part of the July number missing. Some high instinct may have been at work since the gods must have some kind of machinery to help them in these matters. At least the material fact was beyond dispute. He packed the story that evening in neat brown paper, and before taking down the shutters of the shop the next morning, went out and posted it, although sure in his own mind that he was guilty of a foolish proceeding.

Still, there was a lady in the case. But when in the course of the following day Miss Dobbs looked in again, by some odd perversity she was inclined to share this view to the full. She had never heard of Brown's Magazine. The Rotunda and the Covent Garden were her stand-bys. She never read anything else. But she dared say that Brown's money would be as good as other people's, although Brown's Magazine certainly would not have the circulation of the Rotunda.

Several weeks passed. Miss Dobbs looked in now and again to ask if Mr. Harper had "had any luck." To this inquiry one invariable answer was given, and after a time Miss Dobbs seemed to lose something of her faith. Her interest in the story of Dick Smith and in Mr. Harper himself began to wane. She had said from the first that Brown's was a mistake. It should have been the Rotunda or nothing. Miss Dobbs was a firm believer in beginning at the top; in her opinion it was easier to come down than it was to go up.

When the fourth week of silence on the part of Brown's Magazine had been entered upon, she suggested that Mr. Harper should stir them up a bit. With surprising inconsequence he asked for one more week of grace. For his own part, he could not help thinking it was a good sign. Miss Dobbs did not share his view. Brown's had either mislaid the manuscript, they had not received it, or they had destroyed it; and in a state verging upon sarcasm she withdrew from the shop with the final and crushing remark, "that Mr. Harper was a rum one, and she doubted very much whether he would ever make good."

However, Miss Dobbs, in spite of her knowledge of the world, had to admit, a week later, that Mr. Harper knew more about Brown's Magazine than she did. For when she looked in on the morning of Saturday to inquire for news of the ill-fated Dick Smith she was met triumphantly with a letter which had come by the last post the previous evening.

With quite a thrill she took the letter out of its neatly embossed envelope and made an attempt to read the following:

12B, Pall Mall,

September 2.

DEAR SIR,

Your story has now been read twice, and the conclusion very reluctantly come to by the writer is that it would be impossible to use it in Brown's Magazine in its present form. It bears many marks of inexperience, but at the same time it has such a strikingly original quality that the writer would be very glad to have a talk with you about it. In the meantime the MS is being returned to you.

Yours very truly,

EDWARD AMBROSE.

"I don't call that writing," said Miss Dobbs, who had been utterly defeated by the hand of the editor of Brown's Magazine. "It is just a fly walking across the paper without having wiped its feet. Read it to me, Mr. Harper."

Mr. Harper, who had spent nearly an hour the previous evening in making out the letter, and now knew it by heart, enforced her respect by reading it aloud as if it had been nothing out of the common.

"Marks of inexperience!" was her comment. "Like his impudence. I wonder who he thinks he is. You take my advice, Mr. Harper, and send it to the Covent Garden. See what they've got to say about it."

However, before taking that course, Henry Harper felt it would be the part of wisdom to get in touch with the real live editor who had expressed a wish to see him. Besides, there had been something in the letter signed "Edward Ambrose" which had set a chord vibrating in his heart.

IX

In order to pay a visit to 12B, Pall Mall, Henry Harper had to ask for leave. This was readily granted by his master, who was even more impressed by the letter from the editor of Brown's Magazine than was its recipient.

As became one who had a practical acquaintance with editors and publishers, Mr. Rudge knew that for more than a century Brown's Magazine had been a Mecca of the man of letters. Great names were enshrined in its history. These began with Byron and Scott, and flowed through the Victorian epoch to the most gifted and representative minds of the present. Mr. Ambrose himself was a critic of some celebrity; moreover, Brown's Magazine was still half a crown a month as it always had been, so that even its subscribers had a sense of exclusiveness.

Henry Harper was so shy that when the hour came for him to set forth to 12B, Pall Mall, his one desire was to take the advice of Miss Dobbs and not pay his visit at all. But Mr. Rudge was adamant. Henry must go to Pall Mall if only for the sake of the firm. Just as the young man was about to set out, his master emphasized the immense importance of the matter by appearing on the scene, clothes brush in hand, in order to give a final touch to his toilet. No discredit must be done to 249, Charing Cross Road. An unprecedented honor had been conferred upon it.

The reception of Mr. Harper in Pall Mall was of a kind to impress a sensitive young man of high aspiration and very limited opportunity. To begin with, Pall Mall is Pall Mall, and No. 12B in every chaste external was entirely worthy of its local habitation. After a much bemedaled commissionaire of incredibly distinguished aspect had ushered the young man into the front office, he was received by a grave and reverend signior in a frock coat whom Mr. Harper instinctively felt was the editor himself. Such, however, was not the case. The grave and reverend one was a trusted member of the staff, whose duty it was to usher contributors into the Presence, and in the meantime, if delay arose, to arrange for their well-being.

Before Mr. Harper could be received, he spent some terrible minutes in a tiny waiting-room, in which he felt he was being asphyxiated. During that time it was borne in upon him that he would not be equal to the ordeal ahead. Every minute he grew more nervous. He could never face it, he was sure. Far better to have taken the advice of the wise Miss Dobbs, and have been content with the Covent Garden.

Before the fateful moment came he was in a state of despair. Why he should have been was impossible to say. What was Pall Mall in comparison with the forecastle or the futtock shrouds of the Margaret Carey? What were the commissionaire and the frock-coated gentleman in comparison with Mr. Thompson and the Old Man? Yet he came within an ace of flying out of that waiting-room into the street.

The cicerone reappeared, led the young man up a flight of stairs, opened a door, and announced, "Mr. Harper."

Seated at a writing table in a bay of the large, airy, well-appointed room, was a gravely genial man, whose face had that subtle look of power which springs from the play of mind.

He rose at once and offered a welcome of such unstudied cordiality that Henry Harper forgot that he had ever been afraid of him. The editor of Brown's Magazine placed a chair for the young man and asked him to sit down. He then returned to his writing table, leaned back in his own chair, and half turned to face his visitor.

"Your story interested me enormously." The editor studied very closely the young man opposite without appearing to do so; and then he said, in a slightly changed tone, as if a theory previously formed had been confirmed, "I am sure you have had experience of the sea."

The Sailor knew already that he was going to like Mr. Ambrose immensely. In a subtle way he was reminded of Klondyke, and more remotely of Mr. Horrobin, but yet he felt that Mr. Ambrose was not really like them at all.

As for Edward Ambrose, he had at once fixed in his mind a picture of great simplicity, of eager intensity, of an earnestness pathetic and naïf. Strange to say, it was almost exactly the one he had been able to envisage beforehand. If ever a human document had ascended to the first floor of 12B, Pall Mall, it was here before his eyes.

The Sailor began presently to forget his shyness in a surprising way. Mr. Ambrose differed from Mr. Horrobin inasmuch that he was ready, even anxious, to listen. He seemed quite eager that the Sailor should speak about himself. The story had interested him very much. He felt its power, and saw great possibilities for a talent, immature as it was, which could declare itself in a shape so definite.

After a while the Sailor talked with less reserve than perhaps he ought to have done. But such a man was very hard to resist – impossible for certain natures. He had a faculty of perception that was very rare, he was amazingly quick to see and to appreciate; and with this curious power of realizing all that was worthy there was a knack of overlooking, of perhaps even blinding himself, to things less pleasing.

The Sailor's speech, queer and semi-literate as it was, exactly resembled his writing. Here was something rare and strange. The shy earnestness of the voice, the neat serge suit, well tended but of poor quality, the general air of clean simplicity without and within; above all, the haunted eyes of this deep-sea mariner, which had seen so much more than they would ever be able to tell, fixed towards a goal they could never hope to attain, were much as Edward Ambrose had pictured them.

"I want to use your story," said the editor; "but please don't be offended by what I am going to say."

The look in the face of the Sailor showed it would be quite impossible for Mr. Ambrose to offend him.

"There are little things, certain rules that have to be learned before even Genius itself can be given a hearing. And it is vital to master them. But you are so far on the road, that in a short time, if you care to go on, I am convinced you will have all the tricks of a craft which too often begins and ends in trickery and once in a lustrum rises to power. At least that's my experience." And Mr. Ambrose laughed with charming friendliness.

"Now," he went on, "I will let you into a secret that all the world knows. We declined Treasure Island. Not in my time, I am glad to say, but Brown's Magazine declined it. The story is told against us; and if we can we want to wipe the blot off our escutcheon. And I feel, Mr. Harper, that if you will learn the rules of the game and not lose yourself, one day you will help us to do so."

It took the editor some time to explain what he meant. But he did so at considerable length and with wonderful lucidity. The personality of this young man appealed to him. And he felt that the author of Dick Smith had had an almost superhuman task laid upon him. Here was a competitor in the Olympian games starting from a mark so far behind his peers that by all the laws he was out of the race before he started to run it. But was he? Somehow Edward Ambrose felt that if this dauntless spirit, already many times defeated, but never completely overthrown, could find the courage to go on, the world would have cause one day to congratulate Brown's Magazine.

The editor took a cordial leave of his strange visitor. "Keep on keeping on, and see what comes of it. Don't be afraid to use the knife, but be careful not to cut yourself. That's the particular form of the eternal paradox assumed by the absolute for the overthrow of the writing man! It's a riddle each must read in his own way. But instinct is the master key. Trust it as you have done already, and it will unlock every door. However, we will talk of that another time. But you might bear in mind what a great writer said to me here in this room only last week. 'When you feel anything you may have written is really fine it is a golden rule to leave it out.' Clear away a few of the trees, and then we may begin to see the wood. But this doesn't apply to the Island of San Pedro. Not a word of that can be spared."

The Sailor walked on air as far as the National Gallery. But as he turned the corner into Charing Cross Road he was brought to earth by a violent collision with an elderly gentleman. He was not brought literally to earth because he suffered less than his victim.

Before the elderly gentleman had ceased to blaspheme the young man came within an ace of an even more emphatic reminder of earth's realities: at the end of Cranbourn Street an omnibus nearly ran over him. Still, it is the part of charity to cover his sins, because up till then, Tuesday, September the fifth had been the day of his life.