Jim put his pipe in his pocket. I think at last he was convinced that I meant what I said, which I certainly did. The last year had been a year of torment to me. I had finished the 'Brig,' as a matter of duty, but if that piratical craft had sunk with all hands, including its creator, I should not have cared. I drove myself to my desk each day, as a horse might be driven to a treadmill, but the animal could have taken no less interest in his work than I had taken in mine. It was bad--bad--bad; worthless and hateful. There wasn't a new idea in it and I hadn't one in my head. I, who had taken up writing as a last resort, a gamble which might, on a hundred-to-one chance, win where everything else had failed, had now reached the point where that had failed, too. Campbell's surmise was correct; with the pretence of asking him to the Cape for a week-end of fishing and sailing I had lured him there to tell him of my discouragement and my determination to quit. He took his feet from the rail and hitched his chair about until he faced me. “So you're not going to write any more,” he said. “I'm not. I can't.” “What are you going to do; live on back royalties and clams?” “I may have to live on the clams; my back royalties won't keep me very long.” “Humph! I should think they might keep you a good while down here. You must have something in the stocking. You can't have wasted very much in riotous living on this sand-heap. What have you done with your money, for the last ten years; been leading a double life?” “I've found leading a single one hard enough. I have saved something, of course. It isn't the money that worries me, Jim; I told you that. It's myself; I'm no good. Every author, sometime or other, reaches the point where he knows perfectly well he has done all the real work he can ever do, that he has written himself out. That's what's the matter with me--I'm written out.” Jim snorted. “For Heaven's sake, Kent Knowles,” he demanded, “how old are you?” “I'm thirty-eight, according to the almanac, but--” “Thirty-eight! Why, Thackeray wrote--” “Drop it! I know when Thackeray wrote 'Vanity Fair' as well as you do. I'm no Thackeray to begin with, and, besides, I am older at thirty-eight than he was when he died--yes, older than he would have been if he had lived twice as long. So far as feeling and all the rest of it go, I'm a second Methusaleh.” “My soul! hear the man! And I'm forty-two myself. Well, Grandpa, what do you expect me to do; get you admitted to the Old Man's Home?” “I expect--” I began, “I expect--” and I concluded with the lame admission that I didn't expect him to do anything. It was up to me to do whatever must be done, I imagined. He smiled grimly. “Glad your senility has not affected that remnant of your common-sense,” he declared. “You're dead right, my boy; it IS up to you. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.” “I am, but that doesn't help me a whole lot.”