"I was sure of it!" cried the clergyman. "You talk of getting employment, but you will not take the trouble to qualify yourself for the humblest post; you talk of writing, but you will not take the trouble even to write! Not that I suppose for a moment anything would come of it if you did! The magazines, Henry, do not open their columns to young fellows without literary training, any more than houses of business engage clerks without commercial education or knowledge. Yet it would be something even if you tried to write! It would be something if you wrote--as probably you would write--for the waste-paper basket and the dust-bin. But no, you seem to have no application, no energy, no sense of duty; and what more I can do for you I fail to see. I have written several letters on your account; I have risked offending several friends. Nothing has come of it, and nothing is likely to come of it until you put your own shoulder to the wheel. I have put mine. I have done _my_ best. My conscience is an easy one, at any rate." Mr. Walthew caught up his hat and brought these painful proceedings to a close by rising abruptly, as though his feelings were too much for him. Mrs. Ringrose took his hand without a word, and without a word Harry showed him out. "So his conscience is easy!" cried the boy, bitterly. "He talks as if that had been his object--to ease his conscience--not to get me work. He has sent me round the City like a beggar, and he calls that doing his best! I had a good mind to tell him what I call it." "I almost wish you had," said Mrs. Ringrose, shedding tears. "No, mother, there was too much truth in what he says. I have been indolent. Nevertheless, I believe Innes will get me something to do. And meanwhile I intend to have my revenge on Uncle Spencer." "How, my boy?" Harry had never looked so dogged. "By getting something into a magazine within a week." CHAPTER X. A FIRST OFFENCE. When Harry Ringrose vowed that he would get something into a magazine within a week, he simply meant that he would write something and get it taken by some editor. But even so he had no conception of the odds against him. Few beginners can turn out acceptable matter at a day's notice, and fewer editors accept within the week. Fortune, however, often favours the fool who rushes in. Harry began wisely by deciding to make his first offering poetical, for verses of kinds he had written for years, and besides, they would come quicker if they came at all. Undoubted indolence is also discernible in this choice, but on the whole it was the sound one, and that very evening saw Harry set to work in a spirit worthy of a much older literary hand.