"You poor droll mortal!" laughed the cockney. "You poor droll mortal! As if I could ever be afraid of that! What is the matter with my going into training myself? Two can train, you know--even three. You almost make me feel sorry I tried to remedy the loss of those MSS." Somehow or other a sense of some new misfortune came upon me. "What?" I said, nervously. "I say I'm almost sorry I tried to remedy the loss of those manuscripts. Composition, particularly poetry, is devilish hard for me--I admit it--and when I think of how I toiled over my substitutes for your ruined stuff, and see how very ungrateful you are, I grudge the effort." "I don't understand you," I said, anxiously. "What do you mean?" "I mean that I have written and sent out to the editors of the papers you write for a half a dozen poems and short stories." "What has all that got to do with me?" I demanded. "A great deal," he said. "You'll get the pay. _I signed your name to 'em_." "Y--you--you--you--did what?" I cried. "Signed your name to 'em. There was a sonnet to 'A Coal Grab'--that was the longest of the lot. I think it will cover at least six magazine pages--" "But," I cried, "a sonnet never contains more than fourteen lines-- you--fool!" "Oh yes, it does," he replied, calmly. "This one of yours had over four hundred. And then I wrote a three-page quatrain on 'Immortality,' which, if I do say it, is the funniest thing I ever read. I sent that to the _Weekly Methodist_." "Good Lord, good Lord, good Lord!" I moaned. "A three-page quatrain!" "Yes," he observed, calmly lighting one of his accursed cigars. "And you'll get all the credit." A ray of hope entered my soul, and it enabled me to laugh hysterically. "They'll know it isn't mine," said I. "They know my handwriting at the office of the _Weekly Methodist_." "No doubt," said he, dashing all my hopes to the ground. "But--ah-- to remedy that drawback I took pains to find out what type-writer you used, and I had my quatrain copied on one of the same make." "But the letter--the note with the manuscript?" I put in. "Oh, I got over that very easily," he said. "I had that written also on the machine, on thin paper, and traced your signature at the bottom. It will be all right, my dear fellow. They'll never suspect."