'I've felt it. When I was all stirred up over my work, I went there to call. Last Saturday night. Then I got to thinking.' His voice was unsteady, but he kept on. Rather doggedly. 'I've stayed away all this week. Just worked. You know. You've seen how I've kept at it. Until Thursday night. I sorta slipped up then and went around there. She was out. And that's all. I've thought I--I've felt... Hump, do you believe in love--you know--at first sight?' Humphrey's long face wrinkled into a rather wry smile, then sobered. 'I ought to,' he replied. 'In a way it was like that--with me.' 2 The first of Henry's meaty, fantastic little stories of the plain folk of the village, that one called _The Caliph of Simpson Street_, had appeared in the _Gleaner_ of the preceding Saturday. It had made a distinct stir. The second story was out on this the Saturday of our present narrative. In the order of writing, and in Henry's plans, it should have been _The Cauliflowers of the Caliph_. But Bob McGibbon, hanging wearily over the form in the press room late Friday night, suddenly hit on the notion of putting _Sinbad the Treasurer_ in its place. He had all but the last one or two in type by that time. There were no mechanical difficulties; and he didn't consult the author. He could hit Charlie Waterhouse harder this way. _The Cauliflowers_ was quietly humorous; while _Sinbad the Treasurer_ had a punch. That was how McGibbon put it to the foreman, Jimmy Albers. The word 'punch' was fresh slang then. McGibbon himself introduced it into Sunbury. Henry had Charlie and the town money in the back of his head, of course, when he wrote _Sinbad_. Probably more than he himself knew. McGibbon sniffed a sensation in the brief, vivid narrative. And a sensation of some sort he had to have. It was now or never with McGibbon.... He was able even to chuckle at the way Charlie would froth. He couldn't admit that the coat fitted, of course. He would just have to froth. It was Henry's _naïveté_ that made the thing so perfect. An older man wouldn't have dared. Henry had just naturally rushed in. Yes, it was perfect. Bob McGibbon was a hustler. And his nervous quickness of perception had brought him a few small successes and was to bring him larger ones. His Sunbury disaster was perhaps later to be charged to education.