In a London fog the street-lamps are up and about, running at . He is in love or writing a book who is struck by one without . One night that autumn a fog crept through London a month before it was due, and Rob met a lamp-post the following afternoon on his way home from the Wire office. He passed on without a word, though he was not writing a book. Something had happened that day, and, but for Mary Abinger, Rob would have been wishing that his mother could see him now.  
The editor of the Wire had called him into a private room, in which many a young gentleman, who only wanted a chance to put the world to rights, has quaked, hat in hand, before now. It is the dusty sanctum from which Mr. Rowbotham wearily distributes glory or , sometimes with hand, and occasionally like an African explorer largess among the natives. Mr. Rowbotham might be even a greater editor than he is if he was sure that it is quite the proper thing for so a man as himself to believe in anything, and some people think that his politics are to explain away to-day the position he took up yesterday. He seldom writes himself, and, while directing the line to be adopted by his staff, he smokes a cigar which he likes to probe with their pens. He is pale and thin, and has roving eyes, got from always being on the alert against .
 
All the chairs in the editorial room, except Mr. Rowbotham's own, had been converted, like the mantelpiece, into temporary bookcases. Rob tumbled the books off one (your into the State of Ireland was among them, gentle reader) much as a coal-heaver topples his load into a cellar, or like a housewife emptying her .
 
'You suit me very well, Angus,' the editor said. 'You have no desire to write a book, have you?'
 
'No,' Rob answered; 'since I joined the Press that ambition seems to have gone from me.'
 
'Quite so,' said Mr. Rowbotham, his tone implying that Rob now left the court without a stain upon his character. The editor's cigar went out, and he made a spill of a page from of the Woods, which had just come in for review.
 
'As you know,' the editor continued, 'I have been looking about me for a leader-writer for the last year. You have a way of keeping your head that I like, and your style is not so villainously bad. Are you prepared to join us?'
 
'I should think so,' said Rob.
 
'Very well. You will start with £800 a year. Ricketts, as you may have heard, has half as much again as that, but he has been with us some time.'
 
'All right,' said Rob calmly, though his chest was . He used to receive an order for a sack of shavings in the same tone.
 
'You expected this, I dare say?' asked the editor.
 
'Scarcely,' said Rob. 'I thought you would offer the appointment to Marriott; he is a much cleverer man than I am.'
 
'Yes,' Mr. Rowbotham, more readily than Rob thought necessary. 'I have had Marriott in my eye for some time, but I rather think Marriott is a genius, and so he would not do for us.'
 
'You never had that suspicion of me?' asked Rob, a little blankly.
 
'Never,' said the editor . 'I saw from the first that you were a man to be trusted. Moderate is our policy, and not even Ricketts can advocate moderation so as you do. You fight for it with a . By the way, you are , I think?'
 
'Yes,' said Rob.
 
'I only asked,' the editor explained, 'because of the shall and the will difficulty. Have you got over that yet?'
 
'No,' Rob said sadly, 'and never will.'
 
'I shall warn the proof-readers to be on the alert,' Mr. Rowbotham said, laughing, though Rob did not see what at. 'Dine with me at the Garrick on Wednesday week, will you?'
 
Rob nodded, and was retiring, when the editor called after him—
 
'You are not a married man, Angus?'
 
'No,' said Rob, with a sickly smile.
 
'Ah, you should marry,' recommended Mr. Rowbotham, who is a bachelor. 'You would be worth another two hundred a year to us then. I wish I could find the time to do it myself.'
 
Rob left the office a made man, but looking as if it all had happened some time ago. There were men shivering in Fleet Street as he passed down it who had come to London on the same day as himself, every one with a story to tell now, and some already seeking the double death that is called drowning care. Shadows of university graduates passed him in the fog who would have been glad to carry his bag. That night a sandwich-board man, who had once had a thousand a year, crept into the Thames. Yet Rob bored his way home, feeling that it was all in vain.
 
He stopped at Abinger's door to tell him what had happened, but the were locked. More like a man who had lost £800 a year than one who had just been offered it, he mounted to his own rooms, hardly noticing that the door was now ajar. The blackness of night was in the , and a smell of burning leather.
 
'Another pair of gone,' said a voice from the fireplace. It was Dick, and if he had not jumped out of one of the slippers he would have been on fire himself. Long experience had told him the exact moment to jump.
 
'I tried your door,' Rob said. 'I have news for you.'
 
'Well,' said Dick, 'I forced my way in here because I have something to tell you, and resolved not to miss you. Who speaks first? My news is bad—at least for me.'
 
'Mine is good,' said Rob; 'we had better finish up with it.'
 
'Ah,' Dick replied, 'but when you hear mine you may not care to tell me yours.'
 
Dick first, however, and ever afterwards was glad that he had done so.
 
'Look here, Angus,' he said bluntly, 'I don't know that Mary is engaged to Dowton.'
 
Rob stood up and sat down again.
 
'Nothing is to be gained by talking in that way,' he said shortly. 'She was engaged to him six weeks ago.'
 
'No,' said Dick, 'she was not, though for all I know she may be now.'
 
Then Dick told his tale under the fire of Rob's eyes. When it was ended Rob rose from his chair, and stared silently for several minutes at a vase on the mantelpiece. Dick continued talking, but Rob did not hear a word.
 
'I can't sit here, Abinger,' he said; 'there is not room to think. I shall be back presently.'
 
He was gone into the fog the next moment. 'At it again,' muttered the porter, as Rob swung past and was lost ten paces off. He was back in an hour, walking more slowly.
 
'When the colonel writes to you,' he said, as he walked into his room, 'does he make any mention of Dowton?'
 
'He never writes,' Dick answered; 'he only telegraphs me now and again, when a messenger from the happens to be in Thrums.'
 
'Miss Abinger writes?'
 
'Yes. I know from her that Dowton is still there, but that is all.'
 
'He would not have remained so long,' said Rob, 'unless—unless——'
 
'I don't know,' Dick answered. 'You see it would all depend on Mary. She had a soft heart for Dowton the day she refused him, but I am not sure how she would take his reappearance on the scene again. If she resented it, I don't think the boldest baronet that breathes would venture to propose to Mary in her shell.'
 
'The colonel might press her?'
 
'Hardly, I think, to marry a man she does not care for. No, you do him an . What my father would like to have is the power to compel her to care............