The voice of the managing editor had risen high above the smaller noises of the office, and as Hartley walked to his dusty old desk and took up his hat and somewhat tattered gloves there was a moment of unbroken silence. He stood at the door and looked back. Timidly and nervously the busy typewriters behind the little partitions started to tinkle out their doleful staccato again. The managing editor sat, half turned in his pivot chair, looking through the door after Hartley in amazement. Then he swore at him lustily, and declaring before all that was holy that it would do him good to go out and starve, he snorted the burden of his rage from his mind and savagely commanded Daisy Dineen to give him a match. And that was the manner in which John Hartley left the services of the United News Bureau for all time. CHAPTER XI THE STONIER UPLANDS So avid of these earthly crumbs of praise, Behold, how in her need, From door to door of fame she crawls and prays One crust to glut her greed. JOHN HARTLEY, "The Mendicant." Upward through illusion and onward through error, that is life.--"The Silver Poppy." Hartley was in a dilemma. He counted his money with some trepidation, and found that he possessed, all told, just four dollars and ninety cents, one dollar of which was to go for a month's rent of his typewriter. Seldom before had such things troubled him. If they were not, he felt that they ought to be, the mere accidents, the immaterial phases, of life. Placing the little pile of money out before him on his worn old work-table, he realized, as he gazed down at it, that it made a very low wall between him and starvation. Yet he did not altogether regret his breaking away from the United News Bureau. He had never nursed much love for that Grub Street of the New World. He had always realized, too, that journalism in any form could hold out no great hopes for him. He had not the news instinct, that great gift which to an editor, he had learned, only too amply covered the multitudinous sins of illiteracy. Nor had he that patience of spirit which would permit of his ever becoming a humble laborer with the pen of the "pot-boiler." He recalled to his mind poor old Sissons, who so often had drifted into the bureau office--who for years had written his four books a season, under contract, for his paltry one hundred and forty dollars a volume. Sissons? Sissons? Who was Sissons? The name had not gone ringing down the avenues of fame, and yet few men in New York had written so much, none so laboriously.