"It's odd," I said, when he had fallen into silence, "that I used to feel exactly as you do. It stirs an old recollection. If I am not mistaken, I once wrote a paper on the subject."

The boy smiled dreamily. "But if small persons like myself," he began, "can have such frenzies, how must it be with those greater persons who have amazed the world? I have wondered in what kind of exaltation Shakespeare wrote his storm in 'Lear.' There must have been a first conception greater even than his accomplishment. Did he look from his windows at a winter tempest and see miserable old men and women running hard for shelter? Did a flash of lightning bare his soul to the misery, the betrayal and the madness of the world? His supreme moment was not when he flung the completed manuscript aside, or when he heard the actors mouth his lines, but in the flash and throb of creation—in the moment when he knew that he had the power in him to write 'Lear.' What we read is the cold forging, wonderful and enduring, but not to be compared to the producing furnace."

The boy had spoken so fast that he was out of breath.

"Hold a bit!" I cried. "What you have said sounds familiar. Where could I have heard it before?"

There was something almost like a sneer on the boy's face. "What a memory you have! And perhaps you recall this brown suit, too. It's ugly enough to be remembered. Now please let me finish what came to me this afternoon on the hill! Prometheus," he continued, "scaled the heavens and brought back fire to mortals. And he, as the story goes, clutched at a lightning bolt and caught but a spark. And even that, glorious. Mankind properly accredits him with a marvellous achievement. It is for this reason that I comfort myself although I have not yet written a single line of verse."

"My dear fellow," I said, "please tell me where I have read something like what you have spoken?"

The boy's answer was irrelevant. "You first tell me what you did with a brown checked suit you once owned."

"I never owned but one brown suit," I replied, "and that was when I was still in college. I think that I gave it away before it was worn out."

The boy once more clapped his hands. "Oh, I knew it, I knew it. I'll give mine tomorrow to the man who takes our ashes. Now, won't you please play the piano for me?"

"Assuredly. Choose your tune!"

He fumbled a bit in the rack and passing some rather good music, he held up a torn and yellow sheet. "This is what I want," he said.

I had not played it for many years. After a false start or so—for it was villainously set in four sharps for which I have an aversion—I got through it. On a second trial I did better.

The boy made no comment. He had sunk down in his chair until he was quite out of sight. "Well," I said, "what next?"

There was no answer.

I arose from the bench and glanced in his direction. "Hello," I cried, "what has become of you?"

The chair was empty. I turned on all the lights. He was nowhere in sight. I shook the hangings. I looked under my desk, for perhaps the lad was hiding from me in jest. It was unlikely that he could have passed me to gain the door, but I listened at the sill for any sound upon the stairs. The hall was silent. I called without response. Somewhat bewildered I came back to the hearth. Only a few minutes before, as it seemed, there had been a brisk fire with a row of orange peel upon the upper log. Now all trace of the peel was gone and the logs had fallen to a white ash.

I was standing perplexed, when I observed that a little pile of papers lay on the rug just off the end of my desk as by a careless elbow. At least, I thought, this impolite fellow has forgotten some of his possessions. It will serve him right if it is poetry that he wrote upon the hilltop.

I picked up the papers. They were yellow and soiled, and writing was scrawled upon them. At the top was a date—but it was twenty years old. I turned to the last sheet. At least I could learn the boy's name. To my amazement, I saw at the bottom in an old but familiar writing, not the boy's name, but my own.

I gazed at the chimney bricks and their substance seemed to part before my eyes. I looked into a world beyond—a fabric of moonlight and hilltop and the hot fret of youth. Perhaps the boy had only been waiting for the fire upon the hearth to cool to enter this other world of his restless ambition and desire.

Reader, if by chance you have the habit of writing—let us confine ourselves now to sonnets and such airy matter as rides upon the night—doubtless, you sit sometimes at your desk bare of thoughts. The juices of your intellect are parched and dry. In such plight, I beg you not to fall upon your fingers or to draw pictures on your sheet. But most vehemently, and with such emphasis as I possess, I beg you not to rummage among your rejected and broken fragments in the hope of recasting a withered thought to a present mood. Rather, before you sour and curdle, it is good to put on your hat and take your stupid self abroad.

THE END