h, when he had been waiting for his advertising to appear, he had
been obliged to mortgage his household effects at five per cent. a week
in order to live. He had received one thousand dollars in the first mail
after the advertising appeared. And when that mail was brought in and
laid on his desk he didn't have a dollar in his pocket--not a dollar. As
Barrifield proceeded, any vague doubts of success that had crept into
the minds of his listeners disappeared. They began the work of
organization forthwith, and Van Dorn, who had faith in Perner's literary
judgment, proposed that he be the editor. Perner, in turn, proposed Van
Dorn as art editor, with Livingstone as his assistant. Barrifield was
to be nominally business manager, though, for the reason that his
present position consumed most of his time, and as the business offices
for convenience were to be in the studios occupied by the other three,
the management, such as it was, would for a while fall mostly upon
Perner, who referred once more to his ten years' successful experience,
and assumed his double responsibility with some dignity.

A consideration of the first number's contents was then taken up, with
the result that they were to prepare it mostly themselves. They were on
familiar ground now, and Perner and Van Dorn each displayed some
evidence of fitness for their respective positions. There must be two
stirring serials, one of which they would buy. Barrifield knew where one
could be had. Livingstone could do the pictures for this story. The
other would be more in Van's line.

Then they lighted cigars and went back to the premiums, and Barrifield
launched into the details of his recent explorations and discoveries in
the vast jungles of Premium Land. He had examined and priced everything,
from a nut-cracker to a trip abroad. Presently he began to spread a
number of these things on the table, which the waiter had once more
cleared. Besides the watch and Bible, there was a fishing-kit, all but
the rod, which was described fully in a leaflet, a bicycle lamp, a
pamphlet outlining a tour through the Holy Land, sample pages of a
cook-book, and a pair of ear-muffs.

Barrifield arranged these on the cloth, explaining as he did so that a
beautiful box kite had been too large to bring, as was also a gun of
which he could get a limited quantity--a hundred thousand or so--at a
ridiculously low figure. Van Dorn picked up the ear-muffs curiously.

"What do these cost?" h