after he had disposed of the
matter to his entire satisfaction, he took up a letter from his desk and
decided with the same deliberation to purchase also certain oil
properties in Pennsylvania. For Mr. Arthur Presby Carter was a man of
broad financial interests and a large bank account. The Echo was only
one of his many business enterprises, and buying _March Hares_ or oil
wells was all one to him, a means of adding more dollars to his
accumulating hoard.

CHAPTER XI

TEMPTATION ASSAILS PAUL

While Mr. Carter sat in his editorial office and thus reflected on his
many business ventures Paul Cameron was also sitting in his editorial
domain thinking intently.

The hundred-dollar deficit in the school treasury bothered him more than
he was willing to admit. It was, of course, quite possible for him to
repair the error--for he was convinced an error in the _March Hare's_
bookkeeping had caused the shortage. A bill of a hundred dollars must
have been paid and not recorded. Melville Carter had never had actual
experience in keeping accounts, therefore was it so surprising that he
had inadvertently made a mistake? Perhaps he was not so capable of
handling money and keeping it straight as the class had thought when
they had elected him to his post of business manager. Paying bills and
rigorously noting down every expenditure was no easy task. It was a
thankless job, anyway--the least interesting of any of the positions on
the paper, and one that entailed more work than most. To kick at Mel
would be rank ingratitude. It was not likely he had made a mess of
things wittingly. Therefore the only alternative, since neither Mel's
pride nor his own would permit them to confess to the muddle, was to pay
the outstanding bill and slip the rest of the cash as quietly as
possible into the bank.

How strange it was that the sum lacking was just an even hundred
dollars! Yet after all, was it so strange? It was so easy to make a
mistake of one figure in adding and subtracting columns. There did not,
it was true, seem to be any mistake on the books; but of course there
was a mistake somewhere. It was not at all likely that the bank had made
the error. Banks never made mistakes. Well, there was no use crying over
spilled milk. The success of the _March Hare_ had been so phenomenal
hitherto that one must put up with a strata of ill luck.

He hated to give up buying his typewriter, after all the hard work he
had done to earn it. He