wn and venturesome seas of modernized
journalism.

She had not gone to these lengths, however, without the advice of old
Judge Fendall of Hempfield, one of her father's close friends, and a man
I have long admired at a distance, a fine, sound old gentleman, with a
vast respect for business and business men. Besides this, Anthy had
known Ed for several years; he had called on her father, had, indeed,
called on _her_.

It was bitter business for the old Captain to find himself, after so
many glorious years, fallen upon such evil days. I have always been
amused by the thought of the first meeting between Ed Smith and the
Captain, as reported afterward by Fergus (with grim joy).

"Do you know," Ed asked the Captain, "the motto that I'd print on that
door?"

The Captain didn't.

"_Push_," said he dramatically; "that's my motto."

I can see the old Captain drawing himself up to his full stature (he was
about once and a half Ed's size).

"Well, sir," said he, "we need no such sign on _our_ door. Our door has
stood wide open to our friends, sir, for thirty years."

When the old Captain began to be excessively polite, and to address a
man as "sir," he who was wise sought shelter. It was the old Antietam
spirit boiling within him. But Ed Smith blithely pursued his way, full
of confidence in himself and in the god he worshipped, and it was one of
Anthy's real triumphs, in those days of excursions and alarms, that she
was able both to pacify the Captain and keep Fergus down.

Ed came in that morning while I was in the printing-office, a cheerful,
quick-stepping, bold-eyed young fellow with a small neat moustache, his
hat slightly tilted back, and a toothbrush in his vest pocket.

"You are the man," he said to me briskly, "that writes the stuff about
the Corwin neighbourhood."

I acknowledged that I was.

"Good stuff," said he, "good stuff! Give us more of it. And can't you
drum up a few new subs out there for us? Those farmers around you ought
to be able to come up with the ready cash."

To save my life I couldn't help being interested in him. It is one of
the absurd contrarieties of human nature that no sooner do we decide
that a man is not to be tolerated, that he is a villain, than we begin
to grow tremendously interested in him. We want to see how he works. And
the more deeply we get interested, the more we begin to see how human he
is, in what a lot of ways he is exactly like us, or like some of the
friends we