.

"But neither"--here Hal's jaw projected a little--"am I going to let
this thing drop."

"Law?" inquired Sterne. "If you think there's any libel in what the
'Clarion' has said, ask your lawyer. What do you want, anyway?"

Thus recalled to the more pacific phase of his errand, Hal produced his
document. "If you've got an iota of decency or fairness about you,
you'll print that," he said.

Sterne glanced through it swiftly. "Nothing doing," he stated
succinctly. "Did Dr. Surtaine send you here with that thing?"

"My father doesn't know that I'm here."

"Oho! So that's it. Knight-errantry, eh? Now, let me put this thing to
you straight, Mr. Harrington Surtaine. If your father wants to make a
fair and decent statement, without abuse or calling names, over his own
signature, the 'Clarion' will run it, at fifty cents a word."

"You dirty blackmailer!" said Hal slowly.

"Hard names go with this business, my young friend," said the other
coolly.

"At present you've got me checked. But you don't always keep your paid
bully with you, I suppose. One of these days you and I will meet--"

"And you'll land in jail."

"He talks awfully young, doesn't he?" said Mr. Ellis, shaking a solemn
head.

"As for blackmail," continued Sterne, a bit eagerly, "there's nothing in
that. We've never asked Dr. Surtaine for a dollar. He hasn't got a thing
on us." "You never asked him for advertising either, I suppose," said
Hal bitterly.

"Only in the way of business. Just as we go out after any other
advertising."

"If he had given you his ads.--"

"Oh, I don't say that we'd have gone after him if he'd been one of our
regular advertisers. Every other paper in town gets his copy; why
shouldn't we? We have to look out for ourselves. We look out for our
patrons, too. Naturally, we aren't going to knock one of our
advertisers. Others have got to take their chances."

"And that's modern journalism!"

"It's the newspaper business," cried Sterne. "No different from any
other business."

"No wonder decent people consider newspaper men the scum of the earth,"
said Hal, with rather ineffectual generalization.

"Don't be young!" besought McGuire Ellis wearily. "Pretend you're a
grown-up man, anyway. You look as if you might have some sense about you
somewhere, if you'd only give it a chance to filter through."

Some not unpleasant quirk of speech and manner in the man worked upon
Hal's humor.

"Why, I believe you're right about the