rival
newspaper offices. But he was not satisfied. In less than a year he had
ceased to thrill with pride when he was spoken of as editor of the
_Leader_. The political party of which his paper was the avowed local
mouthpiece had won a splendid victory at the School Board election,
"thanks in no small degree to the able support of the _Leader_," the
orators averred when they performed the mutual back-patting at the
Liberal Club meeting. Sir Henry Field bowed his acknowledgments of the
praise when he rose; and the manager of the _Leader_ was much in
evidence. Henry was at that moment writing away at his desk with his
coat off. This is the pathetic side of journalism and of life--one man
sows, another reaps.

Nor was Henry's love affair progressing more happily than his experience
of editing. The swelled head was subsiding; perhaps the swelled heart
also. He heard frequently from home, and there was occasional mention of
Eunice; and when his eye caught the name in his sister's letters he had
a momentary twinge of a regret which he could not express, and did not
quite understand.

Flo Winton had in no wise altered so far as he was capable of judging.
She was still the bright, attractive young woman he had grown suddenly
conscious of a few years ago. Nothing had been whispered of
"engagement," but she had indicated in many unmistakable little ways
that she regarded Henry's future as bound up with her own. Yet he now
began to wonder if he were wise to let things drift on as they were
shaping. He wondered, and let things drift. Flo was quite clear in her
mind that they were "as good as engaged." She understood that the woman
who hesitates is lost.

Mr. P. was away from Laysford for the winter, the second he had spent in
London and on the Continent since Henry and he became acquainted, when
the journalist had the first real glimpse into the mysteriousness of his
friend.

While compiling his weekly column of literary gossip for the _Leader_--a
feature which more than one director had stigmatised as shameful waste
of good space that might have been filled with real news or market
reports--Henry found a short paragraph in the personal column of a
London weekly which made him stare at the print:

"I understand that Adrian Grant, whose book 'Ashes' was so
widely discussed last autumn, is the pen-name of a Mr. Phineas
Pudifant, a country gentleman who is well known in certain
select circles of London's literar