WHEN Robert Blackstone, the new K.C., came

out of Court, a junior murmured to a friend, "He's a dry stick, Blackstone !" and Robert overheard the remark. In his chamb.rs the eminent man was remembering it now; he was thinking what an extraordinary thing it was to have befallen him-he, "Bob," had actually lived to become "a dry stick "!

His mind went back to the time when, revolting from the Bar, he had called himself "Lawless" and gone on the stage; he saw Robert Lawless secretly writing plays, which were never produced, long after Robert Blackstone was supposed to have recovered his senses. Who could have foretold, when he scribbled in Plowden Buildings, that he would one day be a K.C. and a dry stick?

And he was only forty one! If his boyish hopes had been justified, perhaps life would have tasted better to him after all? He lit a cigarette, and stared through the open window. The flowers of the garden were bright in sunshine, and the fountain tinkled dreamily. There was a nursemaid with a child among the flowers; he wondered for a moment whether he would have done well to marry.

Gad! he was getting sentimental, listening to the fountain. Shut the window, ring the bell, see what briefs had come in!

"All right," said Robert, "put it down."

The eagerness with which he used once to seize his briefs! The swift glance to learn the fee, the impatience to gather the contents! Other incomes, other manners-he pulled the tape off leisurely to-day. "A dry stick!" he reiterated. Oh, one had to pay for success, there was no doubt!

His gaze wandered to the letter, and rested on it, startled a little quiver ran through him; for several seconds a sensation that was half pleasure, half pain, held him quite still. The letter had been orwarded

When the colour had crept back to his cheeks, Robert laughed the perfunctory laugh that he gave to a Judge's joke; he was acting to himself unconsciously. His farce, after all these yearsnow that he would be ashamed to own it! The farce that he had once hoped and prayed for! How had the man come by it? But the adventures of the manuscript were unimportant!

He did not reply to Cavendish Pink. "No Flies on Flossie, the work, we understand, of Mr. Robert Blackstone, K.C.!" He shuddered in imagining such a paragraph. No, the best course was silence; probably, it would be inferred that Mr. Lawless was dead. Yet, because he had once hoped and prayed for the piece, because it had once been very dear to him, the K.C. admitted that it would have been agreeable to see it rehearsed.

About a week later, he said that, of course, he wouldn't be so stupid as to go, but that, as a matter of fact, there was nothing to prevent him-his name there would be "Lawless," and who, in a third-rate provincial company, would know his face? The indulgence was out of the question, but

"The

first Call is for twelve o'clock, Monday, 18th inst. !" Constantly he thought of it, sometimes he fingered the letter again; daily, in the drawer of his desk, under the documents, under the briefs, it tempted him the Call from the Past.

If the Easter Term did not end on the 16th of May, there would have been no story; but it does.

When he took his ticket, he felt nervous, guiltyhe trusted he would meet no friend to question where he was going. In the train his mind misgave him about hotels-an hotel might teem with questions. Yes, he must stay in lodgings! While he was about it, why not theatrical lodgings? At Stafford he bought a copy of the Stage, and looked at the landladies' advertisements. Arrived, he directed the cabman to All Saints, for in Manchester all theatrical landladies and All Saints are neighbours.

"I want a sitting-room and bedroom," he said, at a dozen humble doorways, and at last he was accommodated.

Against the piano there was a pile of comic songs; on the mantelpiece there were photographs of performers in tights. The rooms were cosily furnished,

and the rent was ten shillings a week, inclusive of gas and fires; the weather had turned chilly.

66

"One always re urns to one's first love!" mused Robert; and really the first love looked attractive, though he viewed the sign-board of a Mechanical Chimney Sweep" through the window. He asked the woman for her card:

"I'll have to give you my professional card," she said; "I'm in the Profess'on myself-I only let rooms as a 'obby." He read, "Mlle Superba, Terpsichorean Gymnast."

There was a new exhilaration in his veins as he drove to the Prince of Wales's; he did not define the feeling, but what he felt was "Younger." He leapt out and saw "Stage Entrance" painted on a dirty door. Again he pulled a stage-door open! "What name?" he was asked; "Mr. Lawless," he answered. And all at once he did not know if he was happy, or ashamed; but he knew he trembled.

The theatre looked dark for the first minute. He received a dim impression of ill-dressed people, drew a breathful of mouldy atmosphere, that swept him back into the past. A vociferous man shook hands with him, and called him "my boy." "So you've turned up, my boy! That's all right. Afraid you hadn't had my note." "How do you do, Mr.

Robert.

Pink?" responded

They sat down in the stalls, swathed in holland wrappers, and the mist before him melted. The illdressed people acquired features; he realised that the rehearsal had begun, and that the figures on the stage were the butler and the maidservant reading the opening scene of his farce.

"It wants freshening up, Lawless," said Mr. Pink, "it's a bit Noah's Arky here and there-old-fashioned. Still, I think there's stuff in it. I'd like you to keep your ears open; see where you can stick in some lines. Make it modern, my boy; make it a bit topical-you know what I mean?"

"Oh-er--of course," said Robert, with dismay. "Yes, certainly, I must see what I can do."

He was painfully embarrassed; he had not felt so nervous since the day he heard himself pleading in Court for the first time. When the vociferous man left him, he thanked Heaven. Vaguely he thought of making his escape; of sending a telegram to say he was recalled to town.

"Mr. Lawless? "

A pale, shabby girl had come to him. She had very beautiful, grey eyes; he was surprised that he had overlooked her.

"Yes?" he said.

"I'm to play 'Flossie'-I wanted to ask you a question about her. Is she simple in the first act, or only putting it on?"

He had no longer any views on the subject, but it would never do to say so.

"Simple," he said. "Oh, decidedly simple in the first act."

"That's what I thought!" She nodded. "And Mr. Pink wants me to do it the other way-Mr. Pink says she is only putting it on."

He perceived that he had encouraged her to defy the Management.

"Of course," he added, hastily,

"when I say

simple,' I mean relatively simple-everything is relative!"

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"Oh y-e-s,” she said. But she was evidently at sea. After a moment she went on, What I really want to know is, how she is to speak those lines sitting on the hamper-is she sincere in that speech, or isn't she?" "That, of course, is the question," murmured Robert. "Yes, precisely! That speech is thethe--"

"It's the keynote to the part," she said.

He wished distressfully he could remember what speech she meant. Perhaps, after all, he had better be frank.

"To be quite honest with you," he said, "I wrote the piece a good many years ago; and since then

I

They regarded each other silently for a moment. She seemed a singularly nice girl.

"I was quite a young man when I wrote it," he said abruptly.

“And you've done nothing since? "Well-er

not in the dramatic line. You're rehearsing my last attempt."

"Oh, I do hope it'll be a success," she said earnestly. "Then you'll go on working. It must be rather rather queer to see us rehearsing a piece you wrote so long ago?"

"It is," said Robert; "very queer." He paused again; he was again abrupt. "Once I knew every line of the three acts by heart!"

She lifted her eyes to him gravely, and didn't speak for a moment. He liked her for not speaking-he saw she understood.

"How it must take you back!" she whispered.

He sighed and smiled. “So, you see, Mr. Pink probably knows more about your part to-day than the author does! . . . Er, you needn't tell the Company what I've said."

'My fault," called Robert, "I'm to blame."

She looked back over her shoulder, smiling at him as she ran, and somehow the rehearsal was more interesting to Robert. The nice girl read the lines he had invented thirteen years before-and, listening to her, he remembered.

Rain was falling when the rehearsal finished, and she hadn't an umbrella. "Which way do you go?" he asked, as the stage-door slammed.

"All Saints," she answered; "Grosvenor Street." "That's my way too. I want a cab-I can give "If you

you a lift."

"A cab?" She was openly astonished. must squander money, you can take a penny car. But why not walk?"

"Is that what you do in the wet?"

"Well, if I took a cab every time it rained, my salary wouldn't go far, would it?"