Whilst he thus lay and said to himself, "I really must--I positively must get up and dress!" he heard a stumping on the stairs, and a few moments later his door was burst open, and in came Major Dolgelly Jones, a retired officer, resident in Swanton, who had never before done him the honour of a call--and now he actually penetrated to Joseph's bedroom. The major was hot in the face. He panted for breath, his cheeks quivered. The major was a man who, judging by what could be perceived of his intellectual gifts, could not have been a great acquisition to the Army. He was a man who never could have been trusted to act a brilliant part. He was a creature of routine, a martinet; and since his retirement to Swanton had been a passionate golf-player and nothing else. "What do you mean, sir? What do you mean?" spluttered he, "by putting me into your book?" "My book!" echoed Joseph, affecting surprise. "What book do you refer to?" "Oh! it's all very well your assuming that air of injured innocence, your trying to evade my question. Your sheepish expression does not deceive me. Why--there is the book in question by your bedside." "I have, I admit, been reading that novel, which has recently appeared." "You wrote it. Everyone in Swanton knows it. I don't object to your writing a book; any fool can do that--especially a novel. What I do object to is your putting me into it." "If I remember rightly," said Joseph, quaking under the bedclothes, and then wiping his upper lip on which a dew was forming, "If I remember aright, there is in it a major who plays golf, and does nothing else; but his name is Piper." "What do I care about a name? It is I--I. You have put me in." "Really, Major Jones, you have no justification in thus accusing me. The book does not bear my name on the back and title-page." "Neither does the golfing retired military officer bear my name, but that does not matter. It is I myself. I am in your book. I would horsewhip you had I any energy left in me, but all is gone, gone with my personality into your book. Nothing is left of me--nothing but a body and a light tweed suit. I--I--have been taken out of myself and transferred to that----" he used a naughty word, "that book. How can I golf any more? Walk the links any more with any heart? How can I putt a ball and follow it up with any feeling of interest? I am but a carcass. My soul, my character, my individuality have been burgled. You have broken into my inside, and have despoiled me of my personality." And he began to cry. "Possibly," suggested Mr. Leveridge, "the author might----" "The author can do nothing. I have been robbed--my fine ethereal self has been purloined. I--Dolgelly Jones--am only an outside husk. You have despoiled me of my richest jewel--myself." "I really can do nothing, major." "I know you can do nothing, that is the pity of it. You have sucked all my spiritual being with its concomitants out of me, and cannot put it back again. _You have used me up._"