"All right, sir," the boy called from the bottom of the staircase. George Gilbert went up, and knocked at the door above. It was a black door, and the names of Mr. Andrew Morgan and Mr. Sigismund Smith were painted upon it in white letters as upon the door-post below. A pale-faced young man, with a smudge of ink upon the end of his nose, and very dirty wrist-bands, opened the door. "Sam!" "George!" cried the two young men simultaneously, and then began to shake hands with effusion, as the French playwrights say. "My dear old George!" "My dear old Sam! But you call yourself Sigismund now?" "Yes; Sigismund Smith. It sounds well; doesn't it? If a man's evil destiny makes him a Smith, the least he can do is to take it out in his Christian name. No Smith with a grain of spirit would ever consent to be a Samuel. But come in, dear old boy, and put your portmanteau down; knock those papers off that chair--there, by the window. Don't be frightened of making 'em in a muddle; they can't be in a worse muddle than they are now. If you don't mind just amusing yourself with the 'Times' for half an hour or so, while I finish this chapter of the 'Smuggler's Bride,' I shall be able to strike work, and do whatever you like; but the printer's boy is coming back in half an hour for the end of the chapter." "I won't speak a word," George said, respectfully. The young man with the smudgy nose was an author, and George Gilbert had an awful sense of the solemnity of his friend's vocation. "Write away, my dear Sam; I won't interrupt you." He drew his chair close to the open window, and looked down into the court below, where the paint was slowly blistering in the July sun. CHAPTER II. A SENSATION AUTHOR.