Thus was his day brightened, and with this relaxation to
look forward to be plodded on at his proper work, delving so hard that
he could avoid asking himself why he was still delving. What shall we
say? He was digging for the treasure in an orchard, and every now and
again he came out of his hole to pluck an apple; but though the apple
was so sweet to the mouth, it never struck him that the treasure
might be growing overhead. At first he destroyed the fruit of his
stolen hour, and even after he took to carrying it about fondly in his
pocket, and to rewriting it in a splendid new form that had come to
him just as he was stepping into bed, he continued to conceal it from
his overseer's eyes. And still he thought all was over with him when
Pym said the story did not march.
"It is a dead thing," Pym would roar, flinging down the
manuscript,--"a dead thing because the stakes your man is playing for,
a woman's love, is less than a wooden counter to you. You are a fine
piece of mechanism, my solemn-faced don, but you are a watch that
won't go because you are not wound up. Nobody can wind the artist up
except a chit of a girl; and how you are ever to get one to take pity
on you, only the gods who look after men with a want can tell.
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