Tom begged to be allowed to go to work, but David prevailed on him to continue in school. "Something good will surely turn up," David said to the boy. But days went and nothing arose. David was on the point of yielding to Tom, when into the general gloom there shot, for him, a bright shaft of hope. Ten days after he had put Helen into the cab a letter came to him addressed in her handwriting. He hardly dared open it, for he expected reproof--delicately conveyed, of course, but still reproof. When he drew the letter from its envelope an enclosure fell unheeded to the floor. Instead of censure he found this: "It seems your address was not on your manuscript, so Mr. Osborne has sent the enclosed letter to you in care of me. I can hardly refrain from opening it. I feel certain there is good news in it. I congratulate you in advance! "You know how interested I am, so I know you'll come and tell me all about it just as soon as you learn the book's fate. You'll find me in almost any time." David picked up the envelope--stamped in one corner with "William Osborne & Co," a name he had once worshipped from afar off--ripped it open and read the following, signed by Mr. Osborne himself: "We have been greatly interested in your story. If you will call at your convenience I shall be glad to talk with you about it." David stared at the three type-written lines. The letter was not an acceptance--but then neither was it a rejection. A wild hope leaped up within him. Could it be here was a ladder up the unseizable wall? Could it be the success he had failed of five years before was at last about to be won? He dared not let himself be swept to these dizzy heights; he knew how far it was to the ground. So he told himself it could not be possible. Still, was there not a chance? He slipped away without hinting of his hope to Rogers--there would be time for telling later, if anything was to tell--and at ten o'clock reached a little five-story brick building off Union Square that was the home of William Osborne & Co. At first he had not the courage to enter. He remembered, as he walked on, a manuscript novel he had left here in the long ago--and it came back to him that this was the very manuscript he had been working over on that day, now more than five years gone, when Morton's death had summoned him to St. Christopher's. When he reached the door again he drove himself in and was swung to the top floor in a little creaking elevator, and before his courage had time to recede he was within a railed-off square in a large room and had given his name to a boy to be carried to Mr. Osborne. In a moment the boy returned and led him across the room, filled with sub-editors, manuscript readers and stenographers, and ushered him into a small private office. Here at a desk sat a white-haired man chatting with two visitors.