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“My poor, lost boy! Probably not. It is doubtless all out in the hands of eager readers.”

However, Phil contrived to round it up somewhere. The awful and unsuspected results I beheld on my first visit of patronage to Barbran’s cellar, the occasion being the formal opening. A large and curious crowd of five persons, including myself and Phil Stacey, were there. Outside, an old English design of a signboard with a wheel on it creaked despairingly in the wind. Below was a legend: “At the Sign of the Wheel—The Wrightery.” The interior of the cellar was decorated with scenes from the novels of Harvey Wheelwright, triumphant virtue, discomfited villains, benignant blessings, chaste embraces, edifying death-beds, and orange-blossoms. They were unsigned; but well I knew whose was the shame. Over the fireplace hung a framed letter from the Great Soul. It began, “Dear Young Friend and Admirer,” and ended, “Yours for the Light. Harvey Wheelwright.”

The guests did as well as could be expected. They ate and drank everything in sight. They then left; that is to say, four of them did. Finally Phil departed, glowering at me. I am a patient soul. No sooner had the door slammed behind him than I turned to Barbran, who was looking discouraged.

“Well, what have you to say in your defense?”

The way Barbran’s eyebrows went up constituted in itself a defense fit to move any jury to acquittal.

“For what?” she asked.

“For corrupting my young friend Stacey. You made him paint those pictures.”

“They’re very nice,” returned Barbran demurely. “Quite true to the subject.”

“They’re awful. They’re an offense to civilization. They’re an insult to Our Square. Of all subjects in the world, Harvey Wheelwright! Why, Barbran? Why? Why? Why?”

“Business,” said Barbran.

“Explain, please,” said I.

“I got the idea from a friend of mine in Washington Square. She got up a little cellar cafe built around Alice. Alice in Wonderland, you know, and the Looking Glass. Though I don’t suppose a learned and serious person like you would ever have read such nonsense.”

“It happened to be Friday and there wasn’t a hippopotamus in the house,” I murmured.

“Oh,” said Barbran, brightening. “Well, I thought if she could do it with Alice, I could do it with Harvey Wheelwright.”

“In the name of Hatta and the March Hare, why?“

“Because, for every one person who reads Alice nowadays, ten read the author of ‘Reborn Through Righteousness’ and ‘Called by the Cause.’ Isn’t it so?”

“Mathematically unimpeachable.”

“Therefore I ought to get ten times as many people as the other place. Don’t you think so?” she inquired wistfully.

Who am I to withhold a comforting fallacy from a hopeful soul. “Undoubtedly,” I agreed. “But do you love him?”

“Who?” said Barbran, with a start. The faint pink color ran up her cheeks.

“Harvey Wheelwright, of course. Whom did you think I meant?”

“He is a very estimable writer,” returned Barbran primly, quite ignoring my other query.

“Good-night, Barbran,” said I sadly. “I’m going out to mourn your lost soul.”

One might reasonably expect to find peace and quiet in the vicinity of one’s own particular bench at 11.45 P.M. in Our Square. But not at all on this occasion. There sat Phil Stacey. I challenged him at once.

“What did you do it for?”

To do him justice he did not dodge or pretend to misunderstand. “Pay,” said he.

“Phil! Did you take money for that stuff?”

“Not exactly. I’m taking it out in trade. I’m going to eat there.”

“You’ll starve to death.”

“I haven’t got much of an appetite.”

“The inevitable effect of overfeeding on sweets. An uninterrupted diet of Harvey Wheelwright–“

“Don’t speak the swine’s name,” implored Phil, “or I’ll be sick.”

“You’ve sold your artistic birthright for a mess of pottage, probably indigestible at that.”

“I don’t care,” he averred stoutly. “I don’t care for anything except–Dominie, who told you her father was a millionaire?”

“It’s well known,” I said vaguely. “He’s a cattle king or an emperor of sheep or the sultan of the piggery or something. A good thing for Barbran, too, if she expects to keep her cellar going. The kind of people who read Har–our unmentionable author, don’t frequent Bohemian coffee cellars. They would regard it as reckless and abandoned debauchery. Barbran has shot at the wrong mark.”