“Can’t say how glad I am to see you, Mr. Eden.  Often wondered what you were like.”

Here he held Martin off at arm’s length and ran his beaming eyes over Martin’s second-best suit, which was also his worst suit, and which was ragged and past repair, though the trousers showed the careful crease he had put in with Maria’s flat-irons.

“I confess, though, I conceived you to be a much older man than you are.  Your story, you know, showed such breadth, and vigor, such maturity and depth of thought.  A masterpiece, that story—­I knew it when I had read the first half-dozen lines.  Let me tell you how I first read it.  But no; first let me introduce you to the staff.”

Still talking, Mr. Ford led him into the general office, where he introduced him to the associate editor, Mr. White, a slender, frail little man whose hand seemed strangely cold, as if he were suffering from a chill, and whose whiskers were sparse and silky.

“And Mr. Ends, Mr. Eden.  Mr. Ends is our business manager, you know.”

Martin found himself shaking hands with a cranky-eyed, bald-headed man, whose face looked youthful enough from what little could be seen of it, for most of it was covered by a snow-white beard, carefully trimmed—­by his wife, who did it on Sundays, at which times she also shaved the back of his neck.

The three men surrounded Martin, all talking admiringly and at once, until it seemed to him that they were talking against time for a wager.

“We often wondered why you didn’t call,” Mr. White was saying.

“I didn’t have the carfare, and I live across the Bay,” Martin answered bluntly, with the idea of showing them his imperative need for the money.

Surely, he thought to himself, my glad rags in themselves are eloquent advertisement of my need.  Time and again, whenever opportunity offered, he hinted about the purpose of his business.  But his admirers’ ears were deaf.  They sang his praises, told him what they had thought of his story at first sight, what they subsequently thought, what their wives and families thought; but not one hint did they breathe of intention to pay him for it.

“Did I tell you how I first read your story?” Mr. Ford said.  “Of course I didn’t.  I was coming west from New York, and when the train stopped at Ogden, the train-boy on the new run brought aboard the current number of the Transcontinental.”

My God!  Martin thought; you can travel in a Pullman while I starve for the paltry five dollars you owe me.  A wave of anger rushed over him.  The wrong done him by the Transcontinental loomed colossal, for strong upon him were all the dreary months of vain yearning, of hunger and privation, and his present hunger awoke and gnawed at him, reminding him that he had eaten nothing since the day before, and little enough then.  For the moment he saw red.  These creatures were not even robbers.  They were sneak-thieves.  By lies and broken promises they had tricked him out of his story.  Well, he would show them.  And a great resolve surged into his will to the effect that he would not leave the office until he got his money.  He remembered, if he did not get it, that there was no way for him to go back to Oakland.  He controlled himself with an effort, but not before the wolfish expression of his face had awed and perturbed them.