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can never quite find it within myself to trust a man with such abominable physiognomy. His age is unascertained – he could be anywhere between fifteen and thirty. With a face slightly jaundiced from a lacking of vegetables in his diet, with a pug nose, shifty, wolfish eyes and teeth that protrude in all directions, he could have been a lolly prigger in a former life. Who knows? He walks with a slight limp and is stooped in the shoulders from what looks like a lengthy period of indentured servitude, and yet his hands are as white and soft as any maiden’s upon her confirmation day. His name is Colin Tyrone.
    Mr. Wilton brought him around to my desk this morning. The young man was wearing a new suit of tweed and a starched shirt – a suit which might have been purchased for him Saturday last, judging by the crispness of the fabric. His face and hands seemed to poke out of the new suit at odd angles, as though he was unaccustomed to wearing such fine apparel. He was restless and fidgeted constantly, which gave him the appearance of a starved and stunted chained animal. “Have I not seen ya, sar, in the vicinity of Soho?” he said to me. “In a dance hall or like that?”
    “I’m sure I’ve never frequented any such establishment in Soho,” I said, bristling at his insolence.
    A hideous smirk curled his battered lips. “My mistake then. In my former trade, I made the hacquaintance of a number of hupstanding men.”
    “Have you written for any of the other theatres in town,” I asked him, “that you are now apprenticing as stock playwright at the New Albion?”
    The young man directed a surly glance at Mr. Wilton and then back at me. “What the divil are you sayin?” he replied, his voice smooth and surprisingly rich but also full of threats. “That a necessary qualification for this hemployment would be time spent in a theatur?” His gaze was disarming; he fixed his eyes firmly upon mine, as though he were offering up niceties to an opponent before a pugilistic contest.
    “I – I was only asking,” I stammered, “because experience with the pen might be considered a prerequisite for this job.”
    The young man chuckled at that, and with his chuckle, the atmosphere of tension which had pervaded my small backstage cubicle dissipated. “Well now, let me see then.” He held his hands in front of him and tried to remember his resume by counting out the positions on his lily-white fingers. “Since comin to London almost heighteen months ago, I farst found hemployment as a bricklayer for Jack Smith and Associates. I was an actor in the Surrey Coal-hole for about a week before they realized that I didn’t have a head for larnin dialogue. Then I was barman at the Prince of Wales and a hawker of wares in Petticoat Lane. After that, I composed some horiginal melodramas for the penny gaff up there in Islington. And then I did some things which I hain’t too proud of and which can’t be mentioned here although they did bring with them some measure of fame and fortune. And that, I think, is about all the qualifications that an happrentice stock playwright needs to have.”
    Mr. Wilton had been looking at the ceiling and sighing rather forcibly. He is a man alive to the roots of his grey hair at all times, but he was almost fidgety today. His posture was a semaphore for ill-tempered awkwardness and embarrassment, which I know he feels whenever he has to descend from his office and to traverse in the vicinity of the stage, where another breed of beast altogether has dominion. I think that his own hard upbringing, caused by his being orphaned at an early age, has made Mr. Wilton sympathetic to the downtrodden elements in our society. He also seems to believe that anybody can write for the theatre or, at least, can write as well as our current stock playwright. Mr. Wilton glanced wearily at me and said, “Mr. Tyrone has already provided good service to the New Albion in another capacity, and so I thought it would be