you know where to
get it, old chap.'

"'I do,' I replied, 'and I have as good as found it in an unexpected
quarter.' I took up the MSS. of the new book, lying upon the rickety
table actually in front of Dick Whittington.

"'I will prophesy to you,' I said, 'and although it is a second-hand
sort of prophecy it is going to come true nevertheless. You see this
manuscript; this is going to make the first lot of money.'

"Murkel looked at me curiously. Do what he would the poor chap could
not rid his mind of the thought that I was mad, but I will say he was
very patient with me.

"'Give me the introduction to your publisher friend, and I will bet you
a dinner, or two dinners, he accepts this as a start, and most probably
everything else I write afterwards.'

"'Of course,' debated Murkel, 'you are a very amazing person. I meet
you one day and you swear that nobody ever wants anything you do, and
is never likely to want any of your work again; and then a few days
after, without rhyme or reason, you swear they will take everything,
even the things you haven't written. I don't pretend to consider you
at all sane, but I am prepared to tackle the publishers for you; and,
by Jove, you are really eccentric enough to have done something really
good, so you may be right. But I cannot and will not understand why
you cannot take a hundred guineas down for that little Dick
Whittington.'

"'Do you believe in mascots, Murkel?' I asked.

"'Yes,' he said. 'I've got a black cat in the shop that always sits on
a big Chinese idol whenever I have any luck. I don't know what it is,
but the combination of my black cat Timps and that Chinese idol is
extraordinary, and the greatest mascot I know.'

"Well, I told him that my mascots were a lion and the china Dick
Whittington.

"'Where's the lion?' asked Murkel, always on the look-out for curios.

"'Oh, that is at present in a collection,' I told him, at the same time
fervently hoping that Lal would forgive me for ever referring to him as
being in a collection, for I knew the feeling of majestic toleration
with which he regarded the other three lions.

"Very little more remains to be told, except that the person who was
most astonished when my first book was instantly accepted was Murkel,
and his astonishment appeared to greatly increase as each of my
succeeding books made their appearance in print, whilst to-day is one
of the red-letter days of my life, for the most important of