"Your work is good," he said seriously. "Too good. Not up to par on some points, but in a few years you'll be going places. That's why I sneaked away from them and came here--to beg you to reconsider, to stop this writing now, before it's too late." "You mean--you _can't_ mean--you're not--afraid of competition?" He waved an annoyed hand. "Competition, hell! There's always room for more. You don't understand," he went on, screwing his face into a look of determination. "I'm trying to save your peace of mind, your sanity perhaps. The mind is a great and powerful thing, sometimes dangerous. All these things--these alien creatures that a science-fiction author creates--" "Yes?" But he had straightened suddenly, a look of terror on a face gone ashen. He went to the door like a man being pushed, fumbled for the knob. "I beg of you, for your sake, forget it," he called back. Then he was gone. I went out on the porch but MacDonald was not in sight. I heard a strange noise as of the flapping of great leathery wings. A shadow passed across the lawn. I looked up. Nothing. * * * * * The next morning I got a small envelope in the mail. The letter inside read, "Enclosed is a check for your story THE MONBEAST...." I sank into the softest chair in the world and read those wonderful, wonderful words, and held the check in my hand and read those wonderful, wonderful figures. I was so in a trance I hardly noticed the tiny decimal point that scampered on tiny legs across the check. I hardly felt the small, sharp bite--but.... My first acceptance! It was incredible the exhilaration that flowed through me in that instant. It was like a much-needed shot of adrenaline, like cool springwater to a thirsty man. I had a check for a story someone thought enough of to publish. I was an author. A real, live, honest-to-goodness author with a check in my hand to prove to a critical world that I wasn't a bum after all. Suddenly the world was a big, wide, wonderful place to live in, and I loved everyone in it--even the poor, disillusioned Donald MacDonald. But why stop here? I thought. There were more checks where that came from. If I could sell one story, I could sell two, and then three, and four. So I did. In a way, it was something like digging my own grave. You don't understand that now, but in a little while you'll see the reason why. * * * * * After I had haunted the newsstand for about three months, the great day came. THE MONBEAST was the last story in the magazine (at the time I thought they really should have featured it) and my name was misspelled on the contents page, but it was a great day just the same. A day of triumph. A day for rejoicing. I'd had several stories accepted during the several months' interval, but this was the day that the fruits of my labor became evident to the world.