“I will,” he said passionately.  “And I promise you, Miss Morse, that I will make good.  I have come far, I know that; and I have far to go, and I will cover it if I have to do it on my hands and knees.”  He held up a bunch of manuscript.  “Here are the ‘Sea Lyrics.’  When you get home, I’ll turn them over to you to read at your leisure.  And you must be sure to tell me just what you think of them.  What I need, you know, above all things, is criticism.  And do, please, be frank with me.”

“I will be perfectly frank,” she promised, with an uneasy conviction that she had not been frank with him and with a doubt if she could be quite frank with him the next time.

CHAPTER XV

“The first battle, fought and finished,” Martin said to the looking-glass ten days later.  “But there will be a second battle, and a third battle, and battles to the end of time, unless—­”

He had not finished the sentence, but looked about the mean little room and let his eyes dwell sadly upon a heap of returned manuscripts, still in their long envelopes, which lay in a corner on the floor.  He had no stamps with which to continue them on their travels, and for a week they had been piling up.  More of them would come in on the morrow, and on the next day, and the next, till they were all in.  And he would be unable to start them out again.  He was a month’s rent behind on the typewriter, which he could not pay, having barely enough for the week’s board which was due and for the employment office fees.

He sat down and regarded the table thoughtfully.  There were ink stains upon it, and he suddenly discovered that he was fond of it.

“Dear old table,” he said, “I’ve spent some happy hours with you, and you’ve been a pretty good friend when all is said and done.  You never turned me down, never passed me out a reward-of-unmerit rejection slip, never complained about working overtime.”

He dropped his arms upon the table and buried his face in them.  His throat was aching, and he wanted to cry.  It reminded him of his first fight, when he was six years old, when he punched away with the tears running down his cheeks while the other boy, two years his elder, had beaten and pounded him into exhaustion.  He saw the ring of boys, howling like barbarians as he went down at last, writhing in the throes of nausea, the blood streaming from his nose and the tears from his bruised eyes.

“Poor little shaver,” he murmured.  “And you’re just as badly licked now.  You’re beaten to a pulp.  You’re down and out.”

But the vision of that first fight still lingered under his eyelids, and as he watched he saw it dissolve and reshape into the series of fights which had followed.  Six months later Cheese-Face (that was the boy) had whipped him again.  But he had blacked Cheese-Face’s eye that time.  That was going some.  He saw them all, fight after fight, himself always whipped and Cheese-Face exulting over him.  But he had never run away.  He felt strengthened by the memory of that.  He had always stayed and taken his medicine.  Cheese-Face had been a little fiend at fighting, and had never once shown mercy to him.  But he had stayed!  He had stayed with it!