At about the time when Bridges and Yorick were dressing for the performance, a newspaper reporter, wishing to make a few notes of an interview that had been accorded him by a politician staying in the hotel at which the old man had written his long letter, went into the writing-room and made use of the desk where the actor had sat earlier in the evening. Several sheets of blank paper were scattered over it. One of them contained almost a page of writing. Yorick had negligently left it there. It was a beginning made by him before he had succeeded in obtaining a satisfactory wording for his thoughts. This rejected opening read: “My DEAR, FOOLISH YOUNG LADY:--Something has happened which prevents Mr. Bridges from keeping the appointment with you, and you're much better off on that account, for nothing but unhappiness can come to you if you allow yourself to be carried out of your senses by your infatuation for a man who has neither the brains nor the manliness which he seems to have when playing parts that call for the mere simulation of these gifts. Never make an appointment with a man you do not know, especially a young and vain actor who has once got the worst of it in a divorce suit. You'll be thankful some day for this advice, for I know what I speak of. I was once, years ago, just such an actor. The woman got into all sorts of trouble because she wrote me such letters as you have written Bridges, and brought to an early end a life that might have been very happy and youthful. Looked like you, and it is a memory of what she lost and suffered that makes me wish to save you. My dear young ----” There were yet two lines to spare at the foot of the page. The newspaper man, interested by the fragment, thrust it into his pocket. When Poor Yorick had finished his final scene in the comedy at the ----Theatre that night, he made haste to dress and to leave the playhouse. But he loitered near the stage entrance, keeping in the shadow on the other side of the alley, out of the range of the light from the incandescent globe over the door. Bridges was slightly surprised, on returning to his dressing-room, to find that Yorick had already gone. But he attributed this to the ill feeling that had arisen on account of the intended meeting with the girl of the letters and the box.