lot, Mr. Aram," he said, gravely.

There was a long pause. The poet rocked slowly up and down in his
rocking-chair, and looked at his hands, which he rubbed over one another
as though they were cold. Then he raised his head and cleared his
throat.

"Well, gentlemen," he said, "you have made out your case."

"Yes," said the editor, regretfully, "we have made out our case." He
could not help but wish that the fellow had stuck to his original
denial. It was too easy a victory.

"I don't say, mind you," went on Mr. Aram, "that I ever took anybody's
verses and sent them to a paper as my own, but I ask you, as one
gentleman talking to another, and inquiring for information, what is
there wrong in doing it? I say, _if_ I had done it, which I don't admit
I ever did, where's the harm?"

"Where's the harm?" cried the two visitors in chorus.

"Obtaining money under false pretences," said the editor, "is the harm
you do the publishers, and robbing another man of the work of his brain
and what credit belongs to him is the harm you do him, and telling a lie
is the least harm done. Such a contemptible foolish lie, too, that you
might have known would surely find you out in spite of the trouble you
took to--"

"I never asked you for any money," interrupted Mr. Aram, quietly.