Barum West threw down his pen, and looked about his attic with a gloomy face. The light from his one window, a dormer facing the east, was too faint to permit his writing any longer, even had he been in the mood; and how far he was from desiring to go on with his work was shown by his seizing the sheets which were the result of his afternoon's labor, and angrily tearing them into bits. The room was not unlike the traditional abode of that melancholy thing, a poor-devil author. The roof sloped from the middle of the ceiling almost to the floor, the niche of the dormer-window where his writing-table stood being the only part of the eastern side of the chamber where one could stand upright. In the corner on the opposite side stood an old-fashioned, high-posted bedstead; a bureau, over which hung a tarnished mirror of antique frame, was placed opposite the tall stove, in which was carefully cherished a frugal coal fire; a black trunk was pushed under the eaves, while some pine shelves held the young man's unimposing library. Both carpet and wall-paper were dingy and faded, and in the darkening winter twilight the attic was gloomy enough to depress the spirits of one in a frame of mind far more cheerful than that in which West found himself. Most authors are too unhappily familiar with the fact that a financial crisis is apt to be so desperately unproductive of marketable ideas that even the excitement of a definite order is likely, at such a time, to beget in the brain rather a confused sense of impotence than a creative inspiration. One must be well seasoned in the vicissitudes of a literary career to be able to do his best under the combined pressure of sore need and the necessity of seizing at once an unusual opportunity. West was still young in his profession, as well as in years, and the wild exhilaration of receiving a conditional commission had given place to an awful feeling of despairing helplessness. A friend who had considerable confidence in him, and, what was more to the purpose, some acquaintance and influence in theatrical circles, had persuaded a manager to promise to consider an extravaganza from the pen of the would-be playwright, and Barum felt as if his whole future depended upon his success.