XIII. 



MISUNDERSTOOD. 



After failing twice for the Army and wasting 

 some of the best years of my life at an Agri- 

 cultural College studying the rudiments of a 

 profession for which I was temperamentally 

 unfitted, I had turned my thoughts to literature 

 as being the field most likely to provide a scope 

 for my peculiar talents. As the proprietor of 

 several popular newspapers, Lord Balcombe 

 was a man whose patronage would be extremely 

 valuable to a youth standing on the threshold of 

 a journalistic career, and I was very anxious to 

 enlist his sympathy. With this object in view 

 my Uncle Theodore had kindly given me a letter 

 of introduction to the great man, and I lost no 

 time in presenting it. 



I was naturally somewhat nervous as I entered 

 Lord Balcombe' s sanctum, but he put me at my 

 ease at once with a few words of welcome, 

 motioning me to a chair while he glanced rapidly 

 through my uncle's communication. 



" So you're Theodore's boy, are you ?" he 

 276 



