"Yes, yes," Callan answered, hastily, "he's been very successful in launching papers. Now he's trying his hand with a new one. He's any amount of backers--big names, you know. He's to run my next as a _feuilleton_. This--this venture is to be rather more serious in tone than any that he's done hitherto. You understand?" "Why, yes," I said; "but I don't see where I come in." Callan took a meditative sip of whiskey, added a little more water, a little more whiskey, and then found the mixture to his liking. "You see," he said, "Fox got a letter here to say that Wilkinson had died suddenly--some affection of the heart. Wilkinson was to have written a series of personal articles on prominent people. Well, Fox was nonplussed and I put in a word for you." "I'm sure I'm much--" I began. "Not at all, not at all," Callan interrupted, blandly. "I've known you and you've known me for a number of years." A sudden picture danced before my eyes--the portrait of the Callan of the old days--the fawning, shady individual, with the seedy clothes, the furtive eyes and the obliging manners. "Why, yes," I said; "but I don't see that that gives me any claim." Callan cleared his throat. "The lapse of time," he said in his grand manner, "rivets what we may call the bands of association." He paused to inscribe this sentence on the tablets of his memory. It would be dragged in--to form a purple patch--in his new serial. "You see," he went on, "I've written a good deal of autobiographical matter and it would verge upon self-advertisement to do more. You know how much I dislike _that_. So I showed Fox your sketch in the _Kensington_." "The Jenkins story?" I said. "How did you come to see it?" "Then send me the _Kensington_," he answered. There was a touch of sourness in his tone, and I remembered that the _Kensington_ I had seen had been ballasted with seven goodly pages by Callan himself--seven unreadable packed pages of a serial. "As I was saying," Callan began again, "you ought to know me very well, and I suppose you are acquainted with my books. As for the rest, I will give you what material you want." "But, my dear Callan," I said, "I've never tried my hand at that sort of thing." Callan silenced me with a wave of his hand. "It struck both Fox and myself that your--your 'Jenkins' was just what was wanted," he said; "of course, that was a study of a kind of broken-down painter. But it was well done." I bowed my head. Praise from Callan was best acknowledged in silence.