ays misunderstood you," he cried, remorsefully; "you are
not the mere gross tradesman you boast of being."

"Really, you embarrass me. Anyway, I hope that, now your opinion of me
has gone up, my advice will bear fruit. After which I shall not mind
confessing that that last nice bit is a quotation from my first novel.
I could have invented nothing more apropos."

"You give me advice I am powerless to act on," said Morgan, after some
hesitation. "I spent my last shilling to-day."

"No money!" ejaculated Ingram. "The deuce! Don't you draw a regular
income from your father?"

"That was not the arrangement," said Morgan. "I was the first-born,
and he was mortally offended by my refusal to enter the bank and carry
on the name and the tradition of the house. During all those six years
there had been friction and bitterness between us. At last came an
appalling outbreak, and I was suffering from the full pain of my
wounds when I wrote to you. You were good enough to tell him that
genius sometimes earned quite considerable amounts, and the ultimate
result of your intercession, of which you only knew the happy issue,
not the details, was that he agreed to give me six thousand pounds,
with the understanding I was never to expect another penny from him.
My brother was to take my commercial birthright and I the
responsibility for my whole future. I've earned nothing save an odd
few shillings now and again, and all I had from my father I've somehow
managed to mess away."

"Good God!" shrieked Ingram. "Six thousand pounds in five years! An
exemplary young man of simple habits like you! What could you
have done with it all? You're not a spendthrift. You don't gamble, do
you?"

"I don't know how it has gone," said Morgan, helplessly. "I made bad
investments, I lent some of it away, and I suppose I spent the rest."

"And you wanted to sell your soul to a publisher for fifty pounds a
year! The fact is, I suppose, you don't know the value of money at
all--it just melts away."

"For me money has no value. I don't care a pin about it," said Morgan,
doggedly.

"That's scarcely the point," said Ingram. "Whether you care about it
or not, you'll have to raise some of it. Let me interview your father.
The fault is his. He knew you were a poet, and yet he was imprudent
enough to give you capital instead of an income."

"It was my doing. I wanted to be perfectly free and independent of
him--not to be worried by sordid complaints and le