James had swept a space clear on the table, and was arranging some
stationery.
"Don't you care," he replied; "you just sit down and read your little
Omar for a while."
He plunged into the labours of composition, and Bert sat smoking
meditatively. After some moments the writer passed a letter over to the
smoker.
"Think it'll do?" he inquired.
Bert read the letter through carefully.
"Jeems," said he, after due deliberation, "Jeems, you're a blooming
genius."
James stamped the envelope.
"I'll mail it for you when I go out in the morning," Bert suggested.
"Not on your daily bread, sonny. It is posted now by my own hand. We
won't take any chances on _this_ layout, and that I can tell you."
He tramped down four flights and to the corner, although it was
midnight and bitter cold. Then, with a seraphic grin on his
countenance, he went to bed and slept the sleep of the just.
The envelope was addressed to a Mr. James Fay, Spanish Gulch, South
Dakota.
CHAPTER II
THE STORY-BOOK WEST
When a man is twenty-one, and has had no experience, and graduates from
a small college where he roomed alone in splendour, and possesses a
gift of words and a certain delight in reading, and is thrown into new
and, to him, romantic surroundings--when all these stars of chance
cross their orbits, he begins to write a novel.
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