newspaper,
and even if it's a late start, we will be ready next time. And the valley
needs advertising; people in the east don't know where Wenatchee apples
grow. You understand. He will finance a newspaper--or rather he and Lucky
Banks are going to--if I will take the management. He is holding offices
now, in a brick block that is building, until he hears from me."

"Is it in Hesperides Vale, where the Bankses live?"

"Yes. The name of the town is Weatherbee. And I heard from that little
miner, too." Jimmie paused, smiling at the recollection. "It was a kind of
supplement to Bailey's letter. He thought likely I could recommend some
young fellow to start a newspaper. A married man was preferred, as it was
a new camp and in need of more ladies."

Geraldine laughed, flushing softly, "Isn't that just like him?" she said.
"I can see his eyes twinkling."

"It sounds rather good to me," Jimmie went on earnestly. "I have
confidence in Bailey. And it was mother's dream, you know, to see me
establish a paper over there; it would mean something to me to see it
realized--but--do you think you could give up your career to help me
through?"

Geraldine was silent, and Jimmie leaned forward a little, resting on his
stroke. "I know I am not worth it, but so far as that goes, neither was my
father; yet mother gave up everything to back him. She kept him on that
desert homestead the first five years, until he proved up and got his
patent, and he might have stayed with it, been rich to-day, if she had
lived."

"Of course I like you awfully well," said Geraldine, flushing pinkly, "and
it isn't that I haven't every confidence in you, but--I must take a little
time to decide."

A steamer passed, and Jimmie resumed his strokes, mechanically turning the
canoe out of the trough. Geraldine opened the magazine and began to scan
the editor's note under the title. "Why," she exclaimed tremulously, "did
you know about this? Did you see the proofs?"

"No. What is the excitement? Isn't it straight?"

"Listen!" Miss Atkins sat erect; the cushion dropped under her elbow; her
lips closed firmly between the sentences she read.

"'This is one of those true stories stranger than fiction. This man, who
wantonly murdered a child in his path and told of it for the amusement of
a party of pleasure-seekers aboard a yacht on Puget Sound, who should be
serving a prison sentence to-day, yet never came to a trial, is Hollis
Tisdale of the Geographical S