you ask ME, 'cause she was a plaguey sight nigher bein' a sunflower than she was a violet--weighed two hundred and ten and had a face on her as red as--"

"Just a minute, Ase. About that pig?"

"Oh, yes! Well, the pig reminded me of Violet's parrot and the parrot reminded me of a Plymouth Rock rooster I had that used to roost in the pigpen nights--wouldn't use the henhouse no more'n you nor I would--and that, naturally, made me think of pigs, and pigs fetched Josiah's uncle's pig to mind and there I was all ready to start on the yarn. It pretty often works out that way. When you want to start a yarn and you can't start--you've forgot it, or somethin'--just begin somewhere, get goin' somehow. Edge around and keep edgin' around and pretty soon you'll fetch up at the right place TO start. See, don't you, Kent?"

I saw--that is, I saw enough. I came home and this morning I began the "edging around" process. I don't seem to have "fetched up" anywhere in particular, but I shall keep on with the edging until I do. As Asaph says, I must begin somewhere, so I shall begin with the Saturday morning of last April when Jim Campbell, my publisher and my friend--which is by no means such an unusual combination as many people think--sat on the veranda of my boathouse overlooking Cape Cod Bay and discussed my past, present and, more particularly, my future.

CHAPTER II

Which Repeats, for the Most Part, What Jim Campbell Said to Me and What I Said to Him

"Jim," said I, "what is the matter with me?"

Jim, who was seated in the ancient and dilapidated arm-chair which was the finest piece of furniture in the boathouse and which I always offered to visitors, looked at me over the collar of my sweater. I used the sweater as I did the arm-chair when I did not have visitors. He was using it then because, like an idiot, he had come to Cape Cod in April with nothing warmer than a very natty suit and a light overcoat. Of course one may go clamming and fishing in a light overcoat, but--one doesn't.

Jim looked at me over the collar of my sweater. Then he crossed his oilskinned and rubber-booted legs--they were my oilskins and my boots--and answered promptly.

"Indigestion," he said. "You ate nine of those biscuits this morning; I saw you."

"I did not," I retorted, "because you saw them first. MY interior is in its normal condition. As for yours--"

"Mine," he interrupted, filling his pipe from my tobacco pouch, "being accustomed to a breakfast, not a gorge, is abnormal but satisfactory, thank you--quite satisfactory."

"That," said I, "we will discuss later, when I have you out back of the bar in my catboat. Judging from present indications there will be some sea-running. The "Hephzy" is a good, capable craft, but a bit cranky, like the lady she is named for. I imagine she will roll."

He didn't like that. You see, I had sailed with him before and I remembered.

"Ho-se-a," he drawled, "you have a vivid imagination. It is a pity you don't use more of it in those stories of yours."

"Humph! I am obliged to use the most of it on the royalty statements you send me. If you call me 'Hosea' again I will take the 'Hephzy' across the Point Rip. The waves there are fifteen feet high at low tide. See here, I asked you a serious question and I should like a serious answer. Jim, what IS the matter with me? Have I written out or what is the trouble?"

He looked at me again.

"Are you in earnest?" he asked.

"I am, very much in earnest."

"And you really want to talk shop after a breakfast like that and on a morning like this?"

"I do."

"Was that why you asked me to come to Bayport and spend the week- end?"

"No-o. No, of course not."

"You're another; it was. When you met me at the railroad station yesterday I could see there was something wrong with you. All this morning you've had something on your chest. I thought it was the biscuits, of course; but it wasn't, eh?"

"It was not."

"Then what was it? Aren't we paying you a large enough royalty?"

"You are paying me a good deal larger one than I deserve. I don't see why you do it."

"Oh," with a wave of the hand, "that's all right. The publishing of books is a pure philanthropy. We are in business for our health, and--"

"Shut up. You know as well as I do that the last two yarns of mine which your house published have not done as well as the others."

I had caught him now. Anything remotely approaching a reflection upon the business house of which he was the head was sufficient to stir up Jim Campbell. That business, its methods and its success, were his idols.

"I don't know any such thing," he protested, hotly. "We sold--"

"Hang the sale! You sold quite enough. It is an everlasting miracle to me that you are able to sell a single copy. Why a self- respecting person, possessed of any intelligence whatever, should wish to read the stuff I write, to say nothing of paying money for the privilege, I can't understand."

"You don't have to understand. No one expects an author to understand anything. All you are expected to do is to write; we'll attend to the rest of it. And as for sales--why, 'The Black Brig'-- that was the last one, wasn't it?--beat the 'Omelet' by eight thousand or more."

"The Omelet" was our pet name for "The Queen's Amulet," my first offence in the literary line. It was a highly seasoned concoction of revolution and adventure in a mythical kingdom where life was not dull, to say the least. The humblest character in it was a viscount. Living in Bayport had, naturally, made me familiar with the doings of viscounts.

"Eight thousand more than the last isn't so bad, is it?" demanded Jim Campbell combatively.

"It isn't. It is astonishingly good. It is the books themselves that are bad. The 'Omelet' was bad enough, but I wrote it more as a joke than anything else. I didn't take it seriously at all. Every time I called a duke by his Christian name I grinned. But nowadays I don't grin--I swear. I hate the things, Jim. They're no good. And the reviewers are beginning to tumble to the fact that they're no good, too. You saw the press notices yourself. 'Another Thriller by the Indefatigable Knowles' 'Barnacles, Buccaneers and Blood, not to Mention Beauty and the Bourbons.' That's the way two writers headed their articles about 'The Black Brig.' And a third said that I must be getting tired; I wrote as if I was. THAT fellow was right. I am tired, Jim. I'm tired and sick of writing slush. I can't write any more of it. And yet I can't write anything else."

Jim's pipe had gone out. Now he relit it and tossed the match over the veranda rail.

"How do you know you can't?" he demanded.

"Can't what?"

"Can't write anything but slush?"

"Ah ha! Then it is slush. You admit it."

"I don't admit anything of the kind. You may not be a William Shakespeare or even a George Meredith, but you have written some mighty interesting stories. Why, I know a chap who sits up till morning to finish a book of yours. Can't sleep until he has finished it."

"What's the matter with him; insomnia?"

"No; he's a night watchman. Does that satisfy you, you crossgrained old shellfish? Come on, let's dig clams--some of your own blood relations--and forget it."

"I don't want to forget it and there is plenty of time for clamming. The tide won't cover the flats for two hours yet. I tell you I'm serious, Jim. I can't write any more. I know it. The stuff I've been writing makes me sick. I hate it, I tell you. What the devil I'm going to do for a living I can't see--but I can't write another story."

Jim put his pipe in his pocket. I think at last he was convinced that I meant what I said, which I certainly did. The last year had been a year of torment to me. I had finished the 'Brig,' as a matter of duty, but if that piratical craft had sunk with all hands, including its creator, I should not have cared. I drove myself to my desk each day, as a horse might be driven to a treadmill, but the animal could have taken no less interest in his work than I had taken in mine. It was bad--bad--bad; worthless and hateful. There wasn't a new idea in it and I hadn't one in my head. I, who had taken up writing as a last resort, a gamble which might, on a hundred-to-one chance, win where everything else had failed, had now reached the point where that had failed, too.