I sat down before the fire on this bleak winter's
night with a couple of years' work on my knee. One by one I glanced
through the stories and in some cases read them carefully, and one by one
I put them in the fire, and watched them burn. I was heavy at heart, but
I felt that Forbes was right, and my own instinct told me that my ideas
were better than my performance--and Forbes was right. Nothing was left
of the tales; not a shred of paper, not a scrap of writing. They had all
gone up the chimney in smoke. There was no self-pity. I had a grim kind
of feeling regarding the thing, but I had no regrets, and I have never
had any regrets since. I have forgotten most of the titles, and indeed
all the stories except one. But Forbes and I were right; of that I am
sure.
The next day after the arson I walked for hours where London was busiest.
The shop windows fascinated me; they always did; but that day I seemed,
subconsciously, to be looking for something. At last I found it. It was
a second-hand shop in Covent Garden. In the window there was the uniform
of an officer of the time of Wellington, and beside it--the leather coat
and fur cap of a trapper of the Hudson's Bay Company! At that window I
commenced to build again upon the ashes of last night's fire.
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