transferred bodily from the MS. of my first book, and is now generally
admired.

What the profits were I never knew, for they were invested in the second
of our publications. Still jealously keeping the authorship secret, we
published a long comic ballad which I had written on the model of Bab.
With this we determined to launch out in style, and so we had gorgeous
advertisement posters printed in three colours, which were to be stuck
about London to beautify that great dreary city. Y. saw the back-hair of
Fortune almost within our grasp.

[Illustration: "A POLICEMAN TOLD HIM TO GET DOWN."]

One morning our headmaster walked into my room with a portentously
solemn air. I felt instinctively that the murder was out. But he only
said "Where is Y.?" though the mere coupling of our names was ominous,
for our publishing partnership was unknown. I replied, "How should I
know? In his room, I suppose."

He gave me a peculiar sceptical glance.

"When did you last see Y.?" he said.

"Yesterday afternoon," I replied wonderingly.

"And you don't know where he is now?"

"Haven't an idea--isn't he in school?"

"No," he replied in low, awful tones.

"Where then?" I murmured.

"_In prison!_"

"In prison," I gasped.

"In prison; I have just been to help bail him out."

It transpired that Y. had suddenly been taken with a further happy
thought. Contemplation of those gorgeous tricoloured posters had turned
his brain, and, armed with an amateur paste-pot and a ladder, he had
sallied forth at midnight to stick them about the silent streets, so as
to cut down the publishing expenses. A policeman, observing him at work,
had told him to get down, and Y., being legal-minded, had argued it out
with the policeman _de haut en bas_ from the top of his ladder. The
outraged majesty of the law thereupon haled Y. off to the cells.

Naturally the cat was now out of the bag, and the fat in the fire.

To explain away the poster was beyond the ingenuity of even a professed
fiction-monger.

Straightway the committee of the school was summoned in hot haste, and
held debate upon the scandal of a pupil-teacher being guilty of
originality. And one dread afternoon, when all Nature seemed to hold its
breath, I was called down to interview a member of the committee. In his
hand were copies of the obnoxious publications.

[Illustration: "'SUCH STUFF AS LITTLE BOYS SCRIBBLE UP ON WALLS.'"]

I approached the great person with beating heart. He