u ever
suggested to me to use my secret in the way you did just now."

But here Mrs. Harcourt burst into tears, more touched by the alteration
in her husband's manner, I fear, than by any contrition for wrongdoing.
Of course if he wished to withdraw his confidences from her, just as he
had almost confessed he wished to withdraw his NAME, she couldn't help
it, but it was hard that when she sat there all day long trying to think
what was best for them, she should be blamed! At which the quiet and
forgiving John Milton smiled remorsefully and tried to comfort her.
Nevertheless an occasional odd, indefinable chill seemed to creep
across the feverish enthusiasm with which he was celebrating this day of
fortune. And yet he neither knew nor suspected until long after that his
foolish wife had that night half betrayed his secret to the stranger!

The next day he presented a note of introduction from Mr. Fletcher to
the business manager of the "Clarion," and the following morning was
duly installed in office. He did not see his benefactor again; that
single visit was left in the mystery and isolation of an angelic
episode. It later appeared that other and larger interests in the San
Jose valley claimed his patron's residence and attendance; only the
capital and general purpose of the paper--to develop into a party
organ in the interest of his possible senatorial aspirations in due
season--was furnished by him. Grateful as John Milton felt towards him,
he was relieved; it seemed probable that Mr. Fletcher HAD selected him
on his individual merits, and not as the son of a millionaire.

He threw himself into his work with his old hopeful enthusiasm,
and perhaps an originality of method that was part of his singular
independence. Without the student's training or restraint,--for his two
years' schooling at Tasajara during his parents' prosperity came too
late to act as a discipline,--he was unfettered by any rules, and guided
only by an unerring instinctive taste that became near being genius.
He was a brilliant and original, if not always a profound and accurate,
reporter. By degrees he became an accustomed interest to the readers
of the "Clarion;" then an influence. Actors themselves in many a fierce
drama, living lives of devotion, emotion, and picturesque incident, they
had satisfied themselves with only the briefest and most practical daily
record of their adventure, and even at first were dazed and startled
to find that many