h course before a public apparently so
unmindful of it that no rumor of its acceptance or rejection reached the
writer during the half year of its publication; but it rose in book form
from that failure and stood upon its feet and went its way to greater
favor than any book of his had yet enjoyed. I hope that my recognition
of the fact will not seem like boasting, but that the reader will
regard it as a special confidence from the author and will let it go no
farther.

KITTERY POINT, MAINE, July, 1909.

PART FIRST

I.

"Now, you think this thing over, March, and let me know the last of
next week," said Fulkerson. He got up from the chair which he had been
sitting astride, with his face to its back, and tilting toward March on
its hind-legs, and came and rapped upon his table with his thin bamboo
stick. "What you want to do is to get out of the insurance business,
anyway. You acknowledge that yourself. You never liked it, and now it
makes you sick; in other words, it's killing you. You ain't an insurance
man by nature. You're a natural-born literary man, and you've been going
against the grain. Now, I offer you a chance to go with the grain. I
don't say you're going to make your everlasting fortune, but I'll give
you a living salary, and if the thing succeeds you'll share in its
success. We'll all share in its success. That's the beauty of it. I
tell you, March, this is the greatest idea that has been struck
since"--Fulkerson stopped and searched his mind for a fit image--"since
the creation of man."

He put his leg up over the corner of March's table and gave himself a
sharp cut on the thigh, and leaned forward to get the full effect of his
words upon his listener.

March had his hands clasped together behind his head, and he took one
of them down long enough to put his inkstand and mucilage-bottle out
of Fulkerson's way. After many years' experiment of a mustache and
whiskers, he now wore his grizzled beard full, but cropped close; it
gave him a certain grimness, corrected by the gentleness of his eyes.

"Some people don't think much of the creation of man nowadays. Why stop
at that? Why not say since the morning stars sang together?"

"No, sir; no, sir! I don't want to claim too much, and I draw the line
at the creation of man. I'm satisfied with that. But if you want to
ring the morning stars into the prospectus all right; I won't go back on
you."

"But I don't understand why you've set your m