"No buts," said the little man, with dignity. "I shall be offended if you think of saying No. I know the room isn't all that I could wish to offer to a friend, but if you'll put up with it, it's yours as long as you like. And see here, I'll leave you my papers to run over while I'm gone. It'll be a fine thing for me to have you here, and I count it luck; so we'll take that as settled." And so, waving aside all remonstrance, the little artist packed his valise, and half an hour later, with a final grip of the hand, disappeared down the narrow staircase, leaving Arthur monarch of all he surveyed. And then began that period in the experience of our hero which, like the more obscure passages of history, may be passed over in silence, although they contain more of tragedy than many famous battlefields. Emptied of the vivacious presence of Horner, the room seemed singularly desolate, and life at once took a grayer aspect. Perhaps it was helped by the character of the day. The exquisite sky, which had shone brilliant as a jewel for so many weeks, was now filled with heavy clouds; a bitter wind blew, snow had begun to fall, and the city crouched like some frightened animal, waiting for the stroke of the impending blizzard. Arthur's first act was to light the fire, and go over the mass of papers which Horner had confided to him. In the innocence of his spirit Horner had informed him that it was no difficulty for him to write--the really difficult thing was to stop writing; and the fruits of this facility now lay before Arthur in an enormous pile of manuscript. It consisted of pencil jottings on a vast variety of themes, notes on pictures (often pungently sagacious), anecdotes of humorous frauds perpetrated on the credulous, the beginnings of an autobiography as frank as Benvenuto Cellini's, interspersed with fragments of poems, short stories, crude philosophies, and even the draft of a novel. "What on earth does he expect me to do with all this?" groaned Arthur.