about the office.

"I have written an attack on the Member for Vitechapel," he said,
growing calmer, "to hand him down to the execration of posterity, and I
have brought it to the _Flag_. It must go in this veek."

"We have already your poem," said Raphael.

"I know, but I do not grudge my work, I am not like your money-making
English Jews."

"There is no room. The paper is full."

"Leave out Ebenezer's tale--with the blue spectacles."

"There is none. It was completed in one number."

"Well, must you put in your leader?"

"Absolutely; please go away. I have this page to read."

"But you can leave out some advertisements?"

"I must not. We have too few as it is."

The poet put his finger alongside his nose, but Raphael was adamant.

"Do me this one favor," he pleaded. "I love you like a brother; just
this one little thing. I vill never ask another favor of you all my
life."

"I would not put it in, even if there was room. Go away," said Raphael,
almost roughly.

The unaccustomed accents gave Pinchas a salutary shock. He borrowed two
shillings and left, and Raphael was afraid to look up lest he should see
his head wedged in the doorway. Soon after Gluck and his one compositor
carried out the forms to be machined. Little Sampson, arriving with a
gay air on his lips, met them at the door.

On the Friday, Raphael sat in the editorial chair, utterly dispirited, a
battered wreck. The Committee had just left him. A heresy had crept into
a bit of late news not inspected by them, and they declared that the
paper was not worth twopence and had better be stopped. The demand for
this second number was, moreover, rather poor, and each man felt his ten
pound share melting away, and resolved not to pay up the half yet
unpaid. It was Raphael's first real experience of men--after the
enchanted towers of Oxford, where he had foregathered with dreamers.

His pipe hung listless in his mouth; an extinct volcano. His first fit
of distrust in human nature, nay, even in the purifying powers of
orthodoxy, was racking him. Strangely enough this wave of scepticism
tossed up the thought of Esther Ansell, and stranger still on the top of
this thought, in walked Mr. Henry Goldsmith. Raphael jumped up and
welcomed his late host, whose leathery countenance shone with the polish
of a sweet smile. It appeared that the communal pillar had been passing
casually, and thought he'd look Raphael up.

"So you don't pull well together," he