Yes--he was still only a struggler. He nodded as his mind repeated the sentence. Now and then his manuscripts were accepted--but only now and then. His English was admirable; this he had been told often. But there was a something lacking in almost all he wrote, and this too he had been often told. David had tried to write of the big things, the real things--but of such one cannot write convincingly till he has thought deeply or travelled himself through the deep places. David's trouble was, he did not know life--but no one had told him this. So in his ignorance of the real difficulty, he had thought to conquer his unsuccess by putting forth a greater effort. He had gone out less and less often; he had sat longer and longer at his writing-table; his English had become finer and finer. And his people had grown more hypothetical, more unreal. The faster he ran, the farther away was the goal. He sighed again. Then his square jaw tightened, his eyes narrowed to grim crescents, his clenched fist lightly pounded the desk; and to a phalanx of imaginary editors he announced with slow defiance: "Some of these days the whole blamed lot of you will be camping on my door-steps. You just wait!" He was returning to the sifting of the letters when the bell of the apartment rang. He answered the ring himself, as Mrs. Humphrey was out for the afternoon, and opened the door upon a shabby, wrinkled man with a beery, cunning smile. His manner suggested that he had been there before. "Is Mr. Morton at home?" the man asked. "No," David answered shortly, not caring to vouchsafe the information that Morton was in his grave these two days. "But I represent him." "Then I guess I'll wait." "He'll not be back." The man hesitated, then a dirty hand drew an envelope from a torn pocket. "I was to give it only to him, but I guess it'll be all right to leave it with you." David closed the door, ripped open the envelope, glanced at the note, turned abruptly and re-entered Morton's study, and read the lines again: "You paid no attention to the warning I sent you last Friday. This is the last time I write. I must get the money to-day, or--you know! "L. D." He was clutched with a vague fear. Who was L. D.? And how could money be thus demanded of Morton? His mind was racing away into wild guesses, when he observed there was no street and number on the note. In the same instant it flashed upon him that the note must be investigated, and that the address of its writer was walking away in the person of the old messenger. He caught his hat, rushed down the stairs, and came upon the old man just outside the club-house entrance. "I want to see the writer of that note," he said. "Give me the address." "Do better'n that. I'll go with you. I'm the janitor there." David was too agitated to refuse the offer. They walked in silence for several paces, then the old man jerked his head toward the club-house and knowingly winked a watery eye.