"Oh, what a way it is up! My wind isn't now what it used to be, when first I met you warm and young, Cheyne, is it? Such confounded stairs!" said Mr. John Wilkinson, a very stout puffy-looking man for thirty-six years of age, and editor and staff of The Coal-Vase Reporter, one of the most prosperous of the minor trade papers in London.

"My wind is as sound as ever," said the Duke of Long Acre, rising; for Wilkinson was not alone.

"Going up and down these breakneck flights once a day would keep a man in training. Cheyne, allow me to introduce my friend Freemantle. He has a great taste for poetry, writes very beautiful poetry indeed, and is most anxious to make your acquaintance. He has just read your book, 'The Duke of Fenwick,' and is delighted with it. I haven't had time to read it yet! but I shall read it this week, and review it in next week's Reporter. "

Cheyne shook hands with Freemantle, set a chair for him, and pushed his new acquaintance down on it in his jovial freehanded manner.

"And how are you, Freemantle?" asked Cheyne, as though they had known one another for many years. Turning to Wilkinson, he said: "Look up a chair for yourself."

"I am quite well, thank you, Mr. Cheyne."

"For Heaven's sake don't Mister me. I am never Mistered by anyone but duns."

"I beg your grace's pardon," said Wilkinson. "May I have the honour of presenting to your grace Mr. Harry Freemantle? Mr. Harry Freemantle, his Grace the Duke of Long Acre."

The two men rose and bowed profoundly to one another. Then Cheyne, again bowing profoundly and causing his head to describe a semicircle parallel to the horizon, said:

"The interesting preliminaries of introduction having been disposed of, his grace left the room to draw the beer out of his four-and-a-half-gallon cask, kept on the landing outside his grace's bedroom."

He returned in a few minutes with a jug and three glasses. When the three men had settled themselves and lighted their pipes, Wilkinson said:

"I hope we are not disturbing you now, Cheyne? You are not busy?"

"No, not a bit. I have just written a reply to a letter I had this morning from the Earl of Sark. He is an old chum of mine, and has read my book. He wants me to go and stay with him for awhile. But I can't--not just now, anyway."

"Well, you see," said Wilkinson, "Freemantle here is very anxious to do something in the way of verse--publishing it, I mean. He has several poems ready for publication. Poetry isn't in my way, Cheyne, so I thought I'd bring him to you."

"May I ask if you expect it to pay?"

"Well, no," said Freemantle, with a candid smile.

"You are independent of it?"

"In a certain sense I am. I am an attorney, and am employed in the office of Baker and Tranter, Bedford Street."

"Oh, that is all right. Is your purpose to publish a volume?"

"No, I do not aim so high as that."

"I am glad to hear it. There aren't more than six men whose volumes pay the mere expenses of printing and publication. Poetry is the most beggarly of all arts now. Living poets of fame and exquisite merit do not make as much by their trade as the humblest Italian artisan employed in casting plaster-of-Paris in Leather Lane. Writing and publishing poetry is an expensive luxury, and the readers of poetry are now a lost tribe."

"I thought of a much more modest attempt than a book. I thought I might be able to get a few little bits of verse into a magazine or two. I have brought a few little bits with me; I should feel very much obliged to you if you will look at them, and tell me what you think of them, and if there is any chance of their getting in anywhere; and if there is, when?"

"Oh, I'll be glad to do you more than that, if they are all right. I'll give you an introduction to an editor or two, whom I think likely to take them. In fact, if they are all right, I think there can be no question of our planting them somewhere."

"I am sure I am very much obliged to you. You were speaking a moment ago of having had a letter from a nobleman who has read your novel."

"Yes, my old friend, my kind old chum, the Earl of Sark."

"Well, if both of you will promise me to keep a secret anything I may say about another nobleman who has read your book, I can tell you something which will interest you a good deal."

The promise asked was given.

"I know I may depend on you both."

"Entirely."

Wilkinson answered for the two.

"Now, you know of the Duke of Shropshire and his son, the Marquis of Southwold? And you know they happen to bear the same name as you, Cheyne?"

"Yes," said the Duke of Long Acre guardedly. If Freemantle had not thus early mentioned the identity of names between the two, no doubt Cheyne would have claimed acquaintance with both; but here was the wretched name springing up again. Should he never get rid of this odious name?

"Well, Baker and Tranter have had a letter from the Marquis of Southwold, saying he has read your novel (Baker and Tranter are the Duke of Shropshire's lawyers), and that he thinks it a most impudent and barefaced outrage upon his father and his house----"

"What!" exclaimed the Duke of Long Acre, in the profoundest astonishment.

"It is a fact. He says the book is all about a dukedom which is on the point of becoming extinct, as in the case of the dukedom of Shropshire. That you have no claim or title to the name of Cheyne----"

"He lies!" cried Cheyne, all the more vehemently because he was not certain.

"And he wants to know if criminal proceedings cannot be taken against you for slander, malicious injury, and assuming a great name, with a view to annoy or----"

"Go on."

"Or possibly extract money."

"Great heavens! What next?"

"Of course, Cheyne, you do not confound mine with any of the opinions expressed in this letter. Indeed, I now think it would have been better if I had not mentioned it at all. And, for more reasons than one, I should not have done so, only that, of course, the whole thing is utterly absurd. Baker and Tranter have written back that, having had the book and the case placed before counsel, counsel and they agree no action of a criminal or civil nature can be taken in the matter. You will, of course, make no use of anything I have told you?"

"What, sir! Do you, too, doubt my word, question my honour?"

He struck the leaf of the table a mighty blow of his right fist. The leaf of the table flew to the ground, torn from the table; the table tilted up; and all the glasses, pipes, books, and papers went flying in wild confusion around the room. Cheyne sprang to his feet with an oath, and stood, pale as death, except his eyes, which were blazing. He looked like a wild beast ready to spring.

The other two men were also standing now.

"No, no, no, old man," said Wilkinson, in a soothing voice; "nothing is farther from the thoughts of anyone here. Why, we know you--old man!"

Wilkinson did not like to call the furious man either your grace or Cheyne now. Mortal offence might be in either.

"For if any man asperses my mother's name or impugns my honour, I shall take him by the hips and pitch him head downward through that window."

He meant what he said; and they both felt sure he could do it.

"Do be quiet, old man!" said Wilkinson. "I am sure either Freemantle or myself would be one of the very first to defend your mother's name or your honour, if anyone here had dared to call either in question. But no one here has dreamed of any such absurdity."

"Then where is this leprous Marquis, who has dared to do both? By----, I'll choke him with the tongue that said these things, as sure as my name is----" His whole frame was convulsed, the muscles of his throat and his face flushed, deepened into purple. He could not speak. The conflict was too terrible. At last he got breath. "Oh God, is it not horrible that a wretch whom Thou has marked with the sign of Thine own displeasure should try to sully spotless names, and spit its unclean venom on wholesome men with wholesome honours? As sure as the same Great Power made you and me, you shall answer to me for this, foot to foot, eye to eye, life to life!"

Without saying another word, he took up his hat, crushed it down on his head, and dashed out of the room, leaving the two men mute, incapable of speech.

Freemantle was the first to recover.

"Don't you think we ought to follow him? He'll do mischief to himself or somebody else, I am afraid. He's a raving maniac at this moment."

"I do not think he will do any mischief."

"I never saw a man look so like as if he meant what he said."

"No doubt. But I have known Cheyne many years, and you have met him for the first time today. All the time I have known him he has been the most peaceful of men."

"Yes; but these peaceful men, when they break out, are always the worst. How infernally unlucky I was to say anything about that letter!"

"But no one could have foreseen the consequences. Ninety-nine out of a hundred would have laughed at the whole thing. But you did not know Cheyne is sensitive about his name being the same as that of the Duke of Shropshire."

"I hadn't the slightest idea of anything of the kind."

"Of course not, or you would not have spoken. Cheyne is the very soul of honour, and a very excellent fellow, although he tells lies about knowing peers and big pots of all kinds. He said to you he had just had a letter from the Earl of Sark. Now 111 lay you a level shilling that there is----"

"No such title."

"Oh no! Cheyne isn't such a fool as that. But I'll lay you a level shilling that if you look in a morning paper you'll find the Earl of Sark has been doing or saying something. He has either spoken in the House, or written a letter to the secretary of a club, or laid the foundation-stone of a church, or bought a racer of some note, or done something else that has for the moment lifted him out of the ruck of the peers."

"Then you don't attach any importance to what he said?"

"I think he is very angry now, but that before he has got half a mile he will cool down. How far is it from here to where this Marquis lives?"

"Oh, a long way! A couple of hundred miles or more: two-fifty."

"It would be sheer nonsense to suppose his anger could last half the way. And I believe this Marquis spends most of his life at sea?"

"A good deal of it. He was so knocked up by reading this book that he put out to sea almost at once, he and the Duke."

"Then we may dismiss the matter altogether from our minds. I'll lay you another level shilling he draws no blood over this affair. What a horrible mess he has made of the place! He has spilt all the beer and tobacco. There's no cure for spilt beer, but there is for spilt 'baccy. Let us pick up a fill each and have another pipe before we go."