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“Where’s the harm?” cried the two visitors in chorus.

“Obtaining money under false pretences,” said the editor, “is the harm you do the publishers, and robbing another man of the work of his brain and what credit belongs to him is the harm you do him, and telling a lie is the least harm done. Such a contemptible foolish lie, too, that you might have known would surely find you out in spite of the trouble you took to–“

“I never asked you for any money,” interrupted Mr. Aram, quietly.

“But we would have sent it to you, nevertheless,” retorted the editor, “if we had not discovered in time that the poems were stolen.”

“Where would you have sent it?” asked Mr. Aram. “I never gave you a right address, did I? I ask you, did I?”

The editor paused in some confusion, “Well, if you did not want the money, what did you want?” he exclaimed. “I must say I should like to know.”

Mr. Aram rocked himself to and fro, and gazed at his two inquisitors with troubled eyes. “I didn’t see any harm in it then,” he repeated. “I don’t see any harm in it now. I didn’t ask you for any money. I sort of thought,” he said, confusedly, “that I should like to see my name in print. I wanted my friends to see it. I’d have liked to have shown it to–to–well, I’d like my wife to have seen it. She’s interested in literature and books and magazines and things like that. That was all I wanted. That’s why I did it.”

The reporter looked up askance at the editor, as a prompter watches the actor to see if he is ready to take his cue.

“How do I know that?” demanded the editor, sharply. He found it somewhat difficult to be severe with this poet, for the man admitted so much so readily, and would not defend himself. Had he only blustered and grown angry and ordered them out, instead of sitting helplessly there rocking to and fro and picking at the back of his hands, it would have made it so much easier. “How do we know,” repeated the editor, “that you did not intend to wait until the poems had appeared, and then send us your real address and ask for the money, saying that you had moved since you had last written us?”

“Oh,” protested Mr. Aram, “you know I never thought of that.”

“I don’t know anything of the sort,” said the editor. “I only know that you have forged and lied and tried to obtain money that doesn’t belong to you, and that I mean to make an example of you and frighten other men from doing the same thing. No editor has read every poem that was ever written, and there is no protection for him from such fellows as you, and the only thing he can do when he does catch one of you is to make an example of him. That’s what I am going to do. I am going to make an example of you. I am going to nail you up as people nail up dead crows to frighten off the live ones. It is my intention to give this to the papers to-night, and you know what they will do with it in the morning.”

There was a long and most uncomfortable pause, and it is doubtful if the editor did not feel it as much as did the man opposite him. The editor turned to his friend for a glance of sympathy, or of disapproval even, but that gentleman still sat bending forward with his eyes fixed on the floor, while he tapped with the top of his cane against his teeth.

“You don’t mean,” said Mr. Aram, in a strangely different voice from which he had last spoken, “that you would do that?”

“Yes, I do,” blustered the editor. But even as he spoke he was conscious of a sincere regret that he had not come alone. He could intuitively feel Bronson mapping out the story in his mind and memorizing Aram’s every word, and taking mental notes of the framed certificates of high membership in different military and masonic associations which hung upon the walls. It had not been long since the editor was himself a reporter, and he could see that it was as good a story as Bronson could wish it to be. But he reiterated, “Yes, I mean to give it to the papers to-night.”