ollars buys considerable comfort in the shape of milk and ice
and eggs. When it's gone--if poor Shivers isn't--I shall take the
Baptist minister's wife and Miss Sally Ruth Dexter with me, and go and
ask him for another check. He'll give it."

"You'll make him bitterly repent ever having succumbed to the
temptation of appearing charitable," said I.

We were not left long in doubt that Inglesby had other methods of
attack less pleasant than offering checks for charity. Its two largest
advertisers simultaneously withdrew their advertisements from the
_Clarion_.

"Let's think this thing out," said John Flint to Laurence. "Cutting
out ads is a bad habit. It costs good money. It should be nipped in
the bud. You've got to go after advertisers like that and make 'em see
the thing in the right light. Say, parson, what's that thing you were
saying the other day--the thing I asked you to read over, remember?"

_"When the scorner is punished, the simple is made wise; and when the
wise is instructed, he receiveth knowledge,"_ I quoted Solomon.

"That's it, exactly. You see," he explained, "there's always the right
way out, if you've got sense enough to find it. Only you mustn't get
rattled and try to make your getaway out the wrong door or the front
window--that spoils things. The parson's given you the right tip. That
old chap Solomon had a great bean on him, didn't he?"

A few days later there appeared, in the space which for years had been
occupied by the bigger of the two advertisements, the following
pleasant notice:

People Who Disapprove of
Civic Cleanliness,
A Better Town,
Better Kiddies,
and
A Square Deal for Everybody,
_Also_
Disapprove of
Advertising in the Clarion.

And the space once occupied by the other advertiser was headed:

OBITUARIES

That ghastly poetry in which the soul of the Butterfly Man reveled
appeared in that column thereafter. It was a conspicuous space, and
the horn of rural mourning in printer's ink was exalted among us. It
was not very hard to guess whose hand had directed those
counter-blows.

When we met those two advertisers on the street afterward we greeted
them with ironical smiles intended to enrage. They had at Inglesby's
instigation been guilty of a tactical blunder of which the men behind
the _Clarion_ had taken fiendish and unexpected advantage. It had
simply never occurred to