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On the glass panel of his door were inscribed the words: "B. Joyner, Attorney at Law, U.S.A."

Bill Joyner's name was really Bill. He had been christened so by a whimsical parent. He was a fully fledged attorney. He was, moreover, a barrister at the English bar. A third accomplishment, about which his proud relatives knew nothing, was a certain striking success he enjoyed as a writer of love stories.

Bill Joyner was a bad lawyer. By dint of patient and tortuous study he had scraped through his law examinations, but thereafter the law was a dead letter to him. He had shelves filled with imposing text-books. He might, by steady application, have produced an opinion on some abstruse point of law, but it would have been a painful proceeding and possibly inaccurate. Bill hated the law and its practice. The writing of love stories, on the other hand, fascinated him, and when the demand for his work steadily grew, and a steady income was assured, he gave up all attempts to derive a livelihood from the legal profession, and, although it was necessary, for a certain reason, to keep up the pretence of being a lawyer, he regarded any man who sent him a client as his natural enemy.