“If you find anything noteworthy of criticism in my style, I should feel grateful for you to tell me,” said Noakes. “My ambition is to write some day for a more cultured public. I have a pastoral idyll that I shall write when I have time. But, you see, there is a continuous market for books of adventure.” He spoke in a toneless, even voice, without a shade of enthusiasm or regret appearing in his eyes. “Do you think it would be of any use for an outsider to try it--one not in the swim with the publishers?” asked Joyce, curiously. “Certainly. But one needs the imaginative faculty. If you ’ll look at my forehead, you will see I have it firmly developed. Allow me to look at yours. Yes; I see it there. Once started, it is constant employment. They pay half a crown per thousand words. I do my three thousand a day.” Noakes rose to depart. “Thanks for the information,” said Joyce. “I may try my hand. Won’t you have a glass with me before you go?” “No, thank you,” said Noakes. “I find stimulants interfere with brain-work. Good evening.” Noakes gone, Joyce found himself next to the red-headed ex-rector, who was fast asleep, his dirty, pudgy fingers clasped in his lap. He remained, therefore, solitary, and after having looked for some time dejectedly at the three ever-clicking balls on the table, he went out again into the street. Noakes’s hint had taken root in his mind. If that dilapidated man could maintain himself honestly by “popular fiction,” surely he could do so too. Off and on during the last five months he had striven to write an article or short story, but his mind had refused to work. The conviction that his intellect had been shattered during those two awful years had added to his despair. But now he told himself that this was work in which intellectual subtlety and fastidiousness would prove a hindrance. The one thing needful was imagination: also a terrible faculty for continuous quill-driving. To gain a livelihood there would have to be written daily stuff equal to three columns of the “Globe” newspaper. And seven-and-sixpence as the reward! A noble end, he thought bitterly to himself as he walked along, to the ambition of Stephen Chisely, double-first of New College, Oxford--to become a writer of “penny bloods.”