Jim pushed the hair back from his damp forehead and glanced quickly at him. “Is that a figure of speech?” he asked, menacingly.
“Why, of course not: I mean it,” the chaplain replied. “The whole English-speaking world is under the deepest debt to you.”
Jim stared at him in astonishment. “I don’t understand,” he muttered.
“Well, you are the James Easton who wrote Songs of the Highroad, are you not?”
“Oh, that!” Jim smiled. “The book is out, is it? I thought they were going to publish late in the spring.”
“My dear sir,” the visitor exclaimed, “do you mean to say you haven’t seen the reviews?”
“No, I don’t know anything about it,” Jim answered.
“But every man of letters in the country is talking about it. We have all hailed you as the greatest poet of modern times. Why, the one poem, ‘The Nile,’ is enough to bring you immortality. My dear sir, do you really mean that this is news to you?”
“Of course it is,” said Jim. “I haven’t read the papers for weeks.” He sat down suddenly upon his bed, his knees refusing their office.
The chaplain spread out his hands in wonder. “But don’t you know that your arrest has caused the biggest sensation ever known in recent years? First comes the book, and you are hailed as a public benefactor, the friend and interpreter of struggling humanity, the genius of the age, the uncrowned laureate of England; and then the discovery is made that you are one with the James Tundering-West, alias James Easton, wanted on the charge of murder. Why, it has been dumbfounding to us all. Nobody can believe that you are guilty.”