“Perhaps,” suggested the reporter, politely, with the air of one who is trying to cover up a difficulty to the satisfaction of all, “Mr. Aram would remember it if he saw it.”

The editor nodded his head in assent, and took the first page of the two on which the poem was written, and held it out to Mr. Aram, who accepted the piece of foolscap and eyed it listlessly.

“Yes, I wrote that,” he said.  “I copied it out of a book called Gems from American Poets.”  There was a lazy pause.  “But I never sent it to any paper.”  The editor and the reporter eyed each other with outward calm but with some inward astonishment.  They could not see why he had not adhered to his original denial of the thing in toto.  It seemed to them so foolish, to admit having copied the poem and then to deny having forwarded it.

“You see,” explained Mr. Aram, still with no apparent interest in the matter, “I am very fond of poetry; I like to recite it, and I often write it out in order to make me remember it.  I find it impresses the words on my mind.  Well, that’s what has happened.  I have copied this poem out at the office probably, and one of the clerks there has found it, and has supposed that I wrote it, and he has sent it to your paper as a sort of a joke on me.  You see, father being so well-known, it would rather amuse the boys if I came out as a poet.  That’s how it was, I guess.  Somebody must have found it and sent it to you, because I never sent it.”

There was a moment of thoughtful consideration.  “I see,” said the editor.  “I used to do that same thing myself when I had to recite pieces at school.  I found that writing the verses down helped me to remember them.  I remember that I once copied out many of Shakespeare’s sonnets.  But, Mr. Aram, it never occurred to me, after having copied out one of Shakespeare’s sonnets, to sign my own name at the bottom of it.”

Mr. Aram’s eyes dropped to the page of manuscript in his hand and rested there for some little time.  Then he said, without raising his head, “I haven’t signed this.”

“No,” replied the editor; “but you signed the second page, which I still have in my hand.”

The editor and his companion expected some expression of indignation from Mr. Aram at this, some question of their right to come into his house and cross-examine him and to accuse him, tentatively at least, of literary fraud, but they were disappointed.  Mr. Aram’s manner was still one of absolute impassibility.  Whether this manner was habitual to him they could not know, but it made them doubt their own judgment in having so quickly accused him, as it bore the look of undismayed innocence.

It was the reporter who was the first to break the silence.  “Perhaps some one has signed Mr. Aram’s name—­the clerk who sent it, for instance.”

Young Mr. Aram looked up at him curiously, and held out his hand for the second page.  “Yes,” he drawled, “that’s how it happened.  That’s not my signature.  I never signed that.”