Square, where dwelt his friend, Peter Hope, and knocked briskly at
the door.

"Come in," said a decided voice, which was not Peter Hope's.

Mr. William Clodd's ambition was, and always had been, to be the
owner or part-owner of a paper. To-day, as I have said, he owns a
quarter of a hundred, and is in negotiation, so rumour goes, for
seven more. But twenty years ago "Clodd and Co., Limited," was but
in embryo. And Peter Hope, journalist, had likewise and for many a
long year cherished the ambition to be, before he died, the owner
or part-owner of a paper. Peter Hope to-day owns nothing, except
perhaps the knowledge, if such things be permitted, that whenever
and wherever his name is mentioned, kind thoughts arise unbidden--
that someone of the party will surely say: "Dear old Peter! What
a good fellow he was!" Which also may be in its way a valuable
possession: who knows? But twenty years ago Peter's horizon was
limited by Fleet Street.

Peter Hope was forty-seven, so he said, a dreamer and a scholar.
William Clodd was three-and-twenty, a born hustler, very wide
awake. Meeting one day by accident upon an omnibus, when Clodd
lent Peter, who had come out without his purse, threepence to pay
his fare with; drifting into acquaintanceship, each had come to
acquire a liking and respect for the other. The dreamer thought
with wonder of Clodd's shrewd practicability; the cute young man of
business was lost in admiration of what seemed to him his old
friend's marvellous learning. Both had arrived at the conclusion
that a weekly journal with Peter Hope as editor, and William Clodd
as manager, would be bound to be successful.