Arthur remained at the gate while Ruth climbed Maria's front steps.
She heard the rapid click of the type-writer, and when Martin let
her in, found him on the last page of a manuscript. She had come
to make certain whether or not he would be at their table for
Thanksgiving dinner; but before she could broach the subject Martin
plunged into the one with which he was full.

"Here, let me read you this," he cried, separating the carbon
copies and running the pages of manuscript into shape. "It's my
latest, and different from anything I've done. It is so altogether
different that I am almost afraid of it, and yet I've a sneaking
idea it is good. You be judge. It's an Hawaiian story. I've
called it 'Wiki-wiki.'"

His face was bright with the creative glow, though she shivered in
the cold room and had been struck by the coldness of his hands at
greeting. She listened closely while he read, and though he from
time to time had seen only disapprobation in her face, at the close
he asked:-

"Frankly, what do you think of it?"

"I - I don't know," she, answered. "Will it - do you think it will
sell?"

"I'm afraid not," was the confession. "It's too strong for the
magazines. But it's true, on my word it's true."

"But why do you persist in writing such things when you know they
won't sell?" she went on inexorably. "The reason for your writing
is to make a living, isn't it?"

"Yes, that's right; but the miserable story got away with me. I
couldn't help writing it. It demanded to be written."

"But that character, that Wiki-Wiki, why do you make him talk so
roughly? Surely it will offend your readers, and surely that is
why the editors are justified in refusing your work."

"Because the real Wiki-Wiki would have talked that way."

"But it is not good taste."

"It is life," he replied bluntly. "It is real. It is true. And I
must write life as I see it."

She made no answer, and for an awkward moment they sat silent. It
was because he loved her that he did not quite understand her, and
she could not understand him because he was so large that he bulked
beyond her horizon

"Well, I've collected from the TRANSCONTINENTAL," he said in an
effort to shift the conversation to a more comfortable subject.
The picture of the bewhiskered trio, as he had last seen them,
mulcted of four dollars and ninety cents and a ferry ticket, made
him chuckle.

"Then you'll come!" she cried joyously. "That was what I came to
find out."

"Come?" he muttered absently. "Where?"

"Why, to dinner to-morrow. You know you said you'd recover your
suit if you got that money."

"I forgot all about it," he said humbly. "You see, this morning
the poundman got Maria's two cows and the baby calf, and - well, it
happened that Maria didn't have any money, and so I had to recover
her cows for her. That's where the TRANSCONTINENTAL fiver went -
'The Ring of Bells' went into the poundman's pocket."

"Then you won't come?"

He looked down at his clothing.

"I can't."

Tears of disappointment and reproach glistened in her blue eyes,
but she said nothing.

"Next Thanksgiving you'll have dinner with me in Delmonico's," he
said cheerily; "or in London, or Paris, or anywhere you wish. I
know it."

"I saw in the paper a few days ago," she announced abruptly, "that
there had been several local appointments to the Railway Mail. You
passed first, didn't you?"

He was compelled to admit that the call had come for him, but that
he had declined it. "I was so sure - I am so sure - of myself," he
concluded. "A year from now I'll be earning more than a dozen men
in the Railway Mail. You wait and see."

"Oh," was all she said, when he finished. She stood up, pulling at
her gloves. "I must go, Martin. Arthur is waiting for me."

He took her in his arms and kissed her, but she proved a passive
sweetheart. There was no tenseness in her body, her arms did not
go around him, and her lips met his without their wonted pressure.

She was angry with him, he concluded, as he returned from the gate.
But why? It was unfortunate that the poundman had gobbled Maria's
cows. But it was only a stroke of fate. Nobody could be blamed
for it. Nor did it enter his head that he could have done aught
otherwise than what he had done. Well, yes, he was to blame a
little, was his next thought, for having refused the call to the
Railway Mail. And she had not liked "Wiki-Wiki."

He turned at the head of the steps to meet the letter-carrier on
his afternoon round. The ever recurrent fever of expectancy
assailed Martin as he took the bundle of long envelopes. One was
not long. It was short and thin, and outside was printed the
address of THE NEW YORK OUTVIEW. He paused in the act of tearing
the envelope open. It could not be an acceptance. He had no
manuscripts with that publication. Perhaps - his heart almost
stood still at the - wild thought - perhaps they were ordering an
article from him; but the next instant he dismissed the surmise as
hopelessly impossible.

It was a short, formal letter, signed by the office editor, merely
informing him that an anonymous letter which they had received was
enclosed, and that he could rest assured the OUTVIEW'S staff never
under any circumstances gave consideration to anonymous
correspondence.

The enclosed letter Martin found to be crudely printed by hand. It
was a hotchpotch of illiterate abuse of Martin, and of assertion
that the "so-called Martin Eden" who was selling stories to
magazines was no writer at all, and that in reality he was stealing
stories from old magazines, typing them, and sending them out as
his own. The envelope was postmarked "San Leandro." Martin did
not require a second thought to discover the author.
Higginbotham's grammar, Higginbotham's colloquialisms,
Higginbotham's mental quirks and processes, were apparent
throughout. Martin saw in every line, not the fine Italian hand,
but the coarse grocer's fist, of his brother-in-law.

But why? he vainly questioned. What injury had he done Bernard
Higginbotham? The thing was so unreasonable, so wanton. There was
no explaining it. In the course of the week a dozen similar
letters were forwarded to Martin by the editors of various Eastern
magazines. The editors were behaving handsomely, Martin concluded.
He was wholly unknown to them, yet some of them had even been
sympathetic. It was evident that they detested anonymity. He saw
that the malicious attempt to hurt him had failed. In fact, if
anything came of it, it was bound to be good, for at least his name
had been called to the attention of a number of editors. Sometime,
perhaps, reading a submitted manuscript of his, they might remember
him as the fellow about whom they had received an anonymous letter.
And who was to say that such a remembrance might not sway the
balance of their judgment just a trifle in his favor?

It was about this time that Martin took a great slump in Maria's
estimation. He found her in the kitchen one morning groaning with
pain, tears of weakness running down her cheeks, vainly endeavoring
to put through a large ironing. He promptly diagnosed her
affliction as La Grippe, dosed her with hot whiskey (the remnants
in the bottles for which Brissenden was responsible), and ordered
her to bed. But Maria was refractory. The ironing had to be done,
she protested, and delivered that night, or else there would be no
food on the morrow for the seven small and hungry Silvas.

To her astonishment (and it was something that she never ceased
from relating to her dying day), she saw Martin Eden seize an iron
from the stove and throw a fancy shirt-waist on the ironing-board.
It was Kate Flanagan's best Sunday waist, than whom there was no
more exacting and fastidiously dressed woman in Maria's world.
Also, Miss Flanagan had sent special instruction that said waist
must be delivered by that night. As every one knew, she was
keeping company with John Collins, the blacksmith, and, as Maria
knew privily, Miss Flanagan and Mr. Collins were going next day to
Golden Gate Park. Vain was Maria's attempt to rescue the garment.
Martin guided her tottering footsteps to a chair, from where she
watched him with bulging eyes. In a quarter of the time it would
have taken her she saw the shirt-waist safely ironed, and ironed as
well as she could have done it, as Martin made her grant.

"I could work faster," he explained, "if your irons were only
hotter."

To her, the irons he swung were much hotter than she ever dared to
use.

"Your sprinkling is all wrong," he complained next. "Here, let me
teach you how to sprinkle. Pressure is what's wanted. Sprinkle
under pressure if you want to iron fast."

He procured a packing-case from the woodpile in the cellar, fitted
a cover to it, and raided the scrap-iron the Silva tribe was
collecting for the junkman. With fresh-sprinkled garments in the
box, covered with the board and pressed by the iron, the device was
complete and in operation.

"Now you watch me, Maria," he said, stripping off to his undershirt
and gripping an iron that was what he called "really hot."

"An' when he feenish da iron' he washa da wools," as she described
it afterward. "He say, 'Maria, you are da greata fool. I showa
you how to washa da wools,' an' he shows me, too. Ten minutes he
maka da machine - one barrel, one wheel-hub, two poles, justa like
dat."

Martin had learned the contrivance from Joe at the Shelly Hot
Springs. The old wheel-hub, fixed on the end of the upright pole,
constituted the plunger. Making this, in turn, fast to the spring-
pole attached to the kitchen rafters, so that the hub played upon
the woollens in the barrel, he was able, with one hand, thoroughly
to pound them.

"No more Maria washa da wools," her story always ended. "I maka da
kids worka da pole an' da hub an' da barrel. Him da smarta man,
Mister Eden."

Nevertheless, by his masterly operation and improvement of her
kitchen-laundry he fell an immense distance in her regard. The
glamour of romance with which her imagination had invested him
faded away in the cold light of fact that he was an ex-laundryman.
All his books, and his grand friends who visited him in carriages
or with countless bottles of whiskey, went for naught. He was,
after all, a mere workingman, a member of her own class and caste.
He was more human and approachable, but, he was no longer mystery.

Martin's alienation from his family continued. Following upon Mr.
Higginbotham's unprovoked attack, Mr. Hermann von Schmidt showed
his hand. The fortunate sale of several storiettes, some humorous
verse, and a few jokes gave Martin a temporary splurge of
prosperity. Not only did he partially pay up his bills, but he had
sufficient balance left to redeem his black suit and wheel. The
latter, by virtue of a twisted crank-hanger, required repairing,
and, as a matter of friendliness with his future brother-in-law, he
sent it to Von Schmidt's shop.

The afternoon of the same day Martin was pleased by the wheel being
delivered by a small boy. Von Schmidt was also inclined to be
friendly, was Martin's conclusion from this unusual favor.
Repaired wheels usually had to be called for. But when he examined
the wheel, he discovered no repairs had been made. A little later
in the day he telephoned his sister's betrothed, and learned that
that person didn't want anything to do with him in "any shape,
manner, or form."

"Hermann von Schmidt," Martin answered cheerfully, "I've a good
mind to come over and punch that Dutch nose of yours."

"You come to my shop," came the reply, "an' I'll send for the
police. An' I'll put you through, too. Oh, I know you, but you
can't make no rough-house with me. I don't want nothin' to do with
the likes of you. You're a loafer, that's what, an' I ain't
asleep. You ain't goin' to do no spongin' off me just because I'm
marryin' your sister. Why don't you go to work an' earn an honest
livin', eh? Answer me that."

Martin's philosophy asserted itself, dissipating his anger, and he
hung up the receiver with a long whistle of incredulous amusement.
But after the amusement came the reaction, and he was oppressed by
his loneliness. Nobody understood him, nobody seemed to have any
use for him, except Brissenden, and Brissenden had disappeared, God
alone knew where.

Twilight was falling as Martin left the fruit store and turned
homeward, his marketing on his arm. At the corner an electric car
had stopped, and at sight of a lean, familiar figure alighting, his
heart leapt with joy. It was Brissenden, and in the fleeting
glimpse, ere the car started up, Martin noted the overcoat pockets,
one bulging with books, the other bulging with a quart bottle of
whiskey.