The story was about a man who had written a play, and who thought, as every playwright thinks, that it was a great addition to the drama, and would bring him fame and fortune. He took this play to a London manager, but heard nothing from it for a long time, and at last it was returned to him. Then, on going to a first night at the theatre to see a new tragedy which this manager called his own, he was amazed to see his rejected play, with certain changes, produced upon the stage; and when the cry arose for "Author, Author!" he rose in his place; but illness and privation had done their work, and he died proclaiming himself the author of the play. "Ah," said the man when the reading was finished, "I cannot tell you how much the story has interested me. I once was an actor myself, and anything pertaining to the stage interests me, although it is years since I saw a theatre. It must be hard luck to work for fame and then be cheated out of it, as was the man in the tale; but I suppose it sometimes happens--although, for the honesty of human nature, I hope not very often." "Did you act under your own name, or did you follow the fashion so many of the profession adopt?" asked the girl, evidently interested when he spoke of the theatre. The young man laughed, for perhaps the first time on the voyage. "Oh," he answered, "I was not at all noted. I acted only in minor parts and always under my own name, which, doubtless, you have never heard; it is Sidney Ormond." "What!" cried the girl in amazement, "not Sidney Ormond, the African traveller?" The young man turned his wan face and large, melancholy eyes upon his questioner. "I am certainly Sidney Ormond, an African traveller, but I don't think I deserve the '_the_,' you know. I don't imagine any one has heard of me through my travelling any more than through my acting." "The Sidney Ormond I mean," she said, "went through Africa without firing a shot; his book, 'A Mission of Peace,' has been such a success both in England and America. But of course you cannot be he, for I remember that Sidney Ormond is now lecturing in England to tremendous audiences all over the country. The Royal Geographical Society has given him medals or degrees, or something of that sort--but I believe it was Oxford that gave the degree. I am sorry I haven't his book with me; it would be sure to interest you. But some one on board is almost certain to have it, and I will try to get it for you. I gave mine to a friend in Cape Town. What a funny thing it is that the two names should be exactly the same!" "It is very strange," said Ormond gloomily; and his eyes again sought the horizon, and he seemed to relapse into his usual melancholy.