“If you’ve ever had anything to do with generous impulses, you know that they’re easier to come by than to put into practice. When I began to think what I should lose by turning over my job to the other fellow, I balked like an overloaded mule. After all, how could I be sure that the man wasn’t fooling me? He might have imagined everything he had written, after eating too much _pâté de foie gras_. I should be a fool to give a leg up to somebody who was already astride his beast. I couldn’t afford to do it. You know how one’s mind would work.” “I regret to say,” I put in, “that I can see perfectly how my mind would have worked. It would have persuaded me that I had a duty to myself.” Orrington laughed quietly. “Don’t you believe it. Your conscience or your softness—whatever you choose to call it—would have played the deuce with your peace of mind. Mine did. I tore up my note and went out for a walk. Naturally I saw nothing but beggars and poverty: misery stalked me from street to street. I wriggled and squirmed for half a day or more, but I couldn’t get away from the damnable necessities of the story-writer. “In the end I wrote him, of course—the flattering note I had intended, and something more. I told him about my fat job and said I was recommending him for it. By the same mail I wrote to the people who’d offered me the chance, refusing it. I said I regretted that I couldn’t undertake the commission as I had expected, but that I found my other engagements made it impossible. I thought I might as well do the thing in grand style and chuck a bluff while I was about it. I added that I was sending a friend to them who would do the articles better than I could hope to. I didn’t give the fellow’s name, but I told them he’d turn up shortly.” “What happened then?” I asked, for Orrington lighted another cigarette and seemed inclined to rest on his oars. He turned his dull eyes on me and smiled a little sadly. “What happened? Why, nothing much, as far as I know. I suppose the other fellow got my job and saved his body alive. I never inquired. I somehow expected that he’d write to me or come to see me—he had my address, you know—but he never did. I was a little annoyed, I remember, at his not doing so after I’d cut off my nose for him, which is probably why I never tried to follow him up. I never even looked up the articles when they were published. But I’ve often wished I might meet the man and learn how he got on.” “You’ve never seen his name?” I inquired. “He can’t have done much, or you’d have spotted him.” “I suspect,” said Orrington, “that he sent in that story of his under a pseudonym and that he may have done very well for himself since. What do you think, Reynolds? I suppose you consider me a fool for my pains, on the theory that no man ought to be helped out.”