"Hang them over your desk--you might need them, now you're the editor."

She accepted them from his hand, but dubiously, holding them far out
from contact with her dress as something unclean. Morgan reproached
himself for offering her these instruments which had sent so many men
to sudden, undefended death. He reached to relieve her hand.

"Let me do it for you, Miss Thayer."

"No," she denied him, putting down her qualm, clutching the heavy belt
firmly. "It is a notable trophy, a great distinction you're giving me,
Mr. Morgan. I'm afraid you'll think I'm a coward," smiling wanly as she
lifted her face.

"You're not afraid to edit the paper. That seems to me the most
dangerous job in town."

"Most dangerous job in town!" she reproved him, giving him to understand
very plainly that she could name one attended by greater perils.
"They've only killed _one_ editor, so far."

"Can you shoot?" he asked, as seriously concerned as if the fate of
editors in Ascalon darkened over her already.

"Everybody in this town can shoot," she sighed. "It's every boy's
ambition to own and carry a pistol, and most of them do."

"I hope you'll never have to defend the independence of the press with
arms," he said, making a small pleasantry of it. "More than likely
they're gentlemen enough to let you say whatever you want to, and make
no kick."

"The _Headlight_ is going to be an awful joke with Riley Caldwell and me
getting it out. But I'm not going to try to please anybody. That way I
may please them all."

"It sounds like the sensible way. Have you edited before?"

"I used to help Mr. Smith, the editor they killed. That was in the
summer vacation, just. I taught school the rest of the time."

"You must have been the busiest person in town," he said, with pride in
her activities as if they had touched his own life long ago.

"I'm a poor stick of an editor, I'm afraid, though--I seem to be all
mussed up with legal notices and this sudden flood of news. And I can't
set type worth a cent!"

"Just let the news go," he suggested, not without concern for the part
he might bear in her chronicle of late events in Ascalon.

"Let the news go!" She censured him with her softly chiding eyes. "I
wish I could write like Mr. Smith--I'd wake this town up! Poor man, his
coat is hanging in the office by the desk, so suggestive of him it makes
me cry. I haven't had the heart to take it away--it would seem like
expelling his spirit from th