with McAllister.

"What have you found out that makes you so cocky to-night?" he
challenged the editor with interest.

"You'll read all about it in the _Recorder_ when the time comes. You
laughed at me the other night when I warned you that politics was mixed
up in this Interprovincial manoeuvring. Watch me prove it. I'll send
you a marked copy of the paper."

"Bluff! Listen to him, Nat!"

"I'm not in the habit of bluffing, Wade." McAllister's jaw was set as
he patted the edge of the table for emphasis. "I'm responsible to the
public and I tell you both right now that as sure as you're born----
Ah, good-evening, Miss Lawson," he finished, rising to his feet with a
smile.

McAllister busied himself, clearing a space on the table for the tray
she was carrying, and from beneath his shaggy brows the railroad
president's shrewd eyes carried a glint of amusement at the evident
relief with which the editor welcomed the interruption. A moment more
and McAllister might have committed himself to a rash statement.

"And how goes the battle, Cristy? Who won the latest bun fight?"
smiled Wade by way of making conversation. "Have you persuaded your
father----?"

"Indeed I have not," interrupted Cristy with an exaggerated pout. She
looked directly at Ben Wade and frowned, as if the subject were one
about which she would rather not be teased even by an old family friend
of long and intimate standing. "It is too mean for anything! If, as
Mr. McAllister has been good enough to intimate, I am capable of big
successes in newspaper work, is it right to hold me back from the
necessary experience? To hear Daddy talk you'd think I was a little
child----"

"Cristy!" reproved Nat Lawson quietly.

"But I ask you, Mr. Wade, is it fair----?"

"Your father knows best, my child. He probably has good reasons----"

"I do not approve of you working on the night staff. I must ask you
not to refer to this matter again. We will not discuss it now, please."

"Allow me to give you another cup of cocoa, Mr. McAllister?"

"Thank you, but I must be getting along," said McAllister, glancing
hurriedly at his watch. "I have stayed later than I intended, thanks
to the side-tracking of yon railroad president."

"I'll run you down to the office in the car for that," laughed Wade,
also rising. "I'm going out of town for a couple of weeks, Nat; but
the next time I see you I expect to have some news that will interest
you. And I'll g