set dialect above rubies. I didn't know any dialect, but I
borrowed a year's file and learned it like a lesson. They wrote
and asked me for another on the strength of "The Courting of
Amandar Jane." The Permeator was keen on Kipling and water, and I
gave it to them--especially the water. Like all Southern families
the Dundonalds had once had their day. I had travelled everywhere
when I was a boy, and so I accordingly refreshed my dim memories
with some modern travellers and wrote a short series for The
Little Gentleman; "The Boy in the Carpathians," "The Boy in Old
Louisiana," "A Boy in the Tyrol," "A Boy in London," "A Boy in
Paris," "A Boy at the Louvre," "A Boy in Corsica," "A Boy in the
Reconstruction." I reeled off about twenty of them and sold them
to advantage.

It was a terribly dreary task, and I had moments of revolt when I
stamped up and down my little flat and felt like throwing my
resolution to the winds. But I stuck tight to the ink-bottle and
fought the thing through. My novelette, strange to say, was good.
Written against time and against inclination, it has always been
regarded since as the best thing I ever did, and when published in
book form outran three editions.

I made a thundering lot of money--for me, I mean, and in
comparison to my usual income--seldom under five hundred dollars a
month and often more. In eleven weeks I had repaid Grossensteck
and had a credit in the bank. Nine hundred dollars has always
remained to me as a unit of value, a sum of agonising significance
not lightly to be spoken of, the fruits of hellish industry and
self-denial. All this while I had had never a word from the
Grossenstecks. At least they wrote to me often--telephoned--