"We will waive that question," I said loftily. "Produce the verses." "They--they aren't exactly verses," said the young man, plunging his hand into his bosom. "I beg your pardon, I meant will you be good enough to read your five-act tragedy." "How--how in the world did you know?" said the young man, more impressed than ever. He unearthed his tragedy, the title of which I have given, and began to read. I felt as though I were walking in a dream; having been till then ignorant of the fact that earth held young men who held five-act tragedies in their insides. The young man gave me the whole of the performance, from the preliminary scene, where nothing more than an eruption of Vesuvius occurs to mar the serenity of the manager, till the very end, where the Roman sentry of Pompeii is slowly banked up with ashes in the presence of the audience, and dies murmuring through his helmet-vizor: "S.P.Q.R.R.I.P.R.S.V.P.," or words to that effect. For three hours and one-half he read to me. And then I made a mistake. "Sir," said I, "who's your Ma and Pa?" "I haven't got any," said he, and his lower lip quivered. "Where do you live?" I said. "At the back of Tarporley Mews," said he. "How?" said I. "On eleven shillings a week," said he. "I was pretty well educated, and if you don't stay too long they will let you read the books in the Holywell Street stalls." "And you wasted your money buying my books," said I with a lump the size of a bolster in my throat. "I got them second-hand, four and sixpence," said he, "and some I borrowed." Then I collapsed. I didn't weep, but I took the tragedy and put it in the fire, and called myself every name that I knew. This caused the young man to sob audibly, partly from emotion and partly from lack of food. I took off my hat to him before I showed him out, and we went to a restaurant and I arranged things generally on a financial basis. Would that I could let the tale stop here. But I cannot. Three days later a man came to see me on business, an objectionable man of uncompromising truth. Just before he departed he said: "D' you know anything about the struggling author of a tragedy called 'The Betrayal of Confidences'?" "Yes," said I. "One of the few poor souls who in the teeth of grinding poverty keep alight." "At the back of Tarporley Mews," said he. "On eleven shillings a week." "On the mischief!" said I. "He didn't happen to tell you that he considered you the finest, subtlest, truest, and so forth of all the living so forths, did he?" "He may have said something out of the fulness of an overladen heart. You know how unbridled is the enthusiasm of----" "Young gentlemen who buy your books with their last farthing. You didn't soak it all in by any chance, give him a good meal and half a sovereign as well, did you?" "I own up," I said. "I did all that and more. But how do you know?" "Because he victimised me in the same way a fortnight ago."