espair, "while those----"

"But you can understand," interrupted Mr. Sprudell, with a gesture of
depreciation, "how a man feels to seem to"--he all but achieved a
blush--"to toot his own horn."

"I can understand your reluctance perfectly" Miss Dunbar admitted
sympathetically, and it was then he noticed how low and pleasant her
voice was. She felt that she did understand perfectly--she had a notion
that nothing short of total paralysis of the vocal cords would stop him
after he had gone through the "modest hero's" usual preamble.

"But," she urged, "there is so much crime and cowardice, so many
dreadful things, printed, that I think stories of self-sacrifice and
brave deeds like yours should be given the widest publicity--a kind of
antidote--you know what I mean?"

"Exactly," Mr. Sprudell acquiesced eagerly. "Moral effect upon the youth
of the land. Establishes standards of conduct, raises high ideals in the
mind of the reader. Of course, looking at it from that point of
view----" Obviously Mr. Sprudell was weakening.

"That's the view you must take of it," insisted Miss Dunbar sweetly.

Mr. Sprudell regarded his toe. Charming as she was, he wondered if she
could do the interview--him--justice. A hint of his interesting
personality would make an effective preface, he thought, and a short
sketch of his childhood culminating in his successful business career.

"Out there in the silences, where the peaks pierce the blue----" began
Mr. Sprudell dreamily.

"Where?" Miss Dunbar felt for a pencil.

"Er--Bitter Root Mountains." The business-like question and tone
disconcerted him slightly.

Mr. Sprudell backed up and started again:

"Out there in the silence, where the peaks pierce the blue, we pitched
our tents in the wilderness--in the forest primeval. We pillowed our
heads upon nature's heart, and lay at night watching the cold stars
shivering in their firmament." That was good! Mr. Sprudell wondered if
it was original or had he read it somewhere? "By day, like primordial
man, we crept around beetling crags and scaled inaccessible peaks in
pursuit of the wild things----"

"Who crept with you?" inquired Miss Dunbar prosaically. "How far were
you from a railroad?"

A shade of irritation replaced the look of poetic exaltation upon
Sprudell's face. It would have been far better if they had sent a man. A
man would undoubtedly have taken the interview verbatim.

"An old prospector and mountain man named Griswold--