n you,
for by this time you ought to have your fighting blood at the
right temperature; and I've seen you play great polo in spite
of a cracked rib.
"P. S. If any one else intimates that you are a fool, trounce
him one for me."
"If there's anything in heredity you're a lucky young man," said
Jolter seriously, as he handed back the letter.
"I think the governor was worried about it himself," admitted Bobby
with a smile; "and if he was doubtful I can't blame you for being so.
Nevertheless, Mr. Jolter, I must insist that we are going to have a
policy," and he quietly outlined it.
Mr. Jolter had been so long a directing voice in the newspaper
business that he could not be startled by anything short of a
presidential assassination, and that at press time. Nevertheless, at
Bobby's announcement he immediately sought for his pipe and was
compelled to go into his own office after it. He came back lighting it
and felt better.
"It's suicide!" he declared.
"Then we'll commit suicide," said Bobby pleasantly.
Mr. Jolter, after long, grinning thought, solemnly shook hands with
him.
"I'm for it," said he. "Here's hoping that we survive long enough to
write our own obituary!"
Mr. Jolter, to whom fighting was as the breath of new-mown hay, and
who had long been curbed in that delightful occupation, went back into
his own office with a more cheerful air than he had worn for many a
day, and issued a few forceful orders, winding up with a direction to
the press foreman to prepare for ten thousand extra copies that
evening.
When the three o'clock edition of the _Bulletin_ came on the street,
the entire first page was taken up by a life-size half-tone portrait
of Sam Stone, and underneath it was the simple legend:
THIS MAN MUST LEAVE TOWN
The first citizens to awake to the fact that the _Bulletin_ was born
anew were the newsboys. Those live and enterprising merchants, with a
very keen judgment of comparative values, had long since ceased to
call the _Bulletin_ at all; half of them had even ceased to carry it.
Within two minutes after this edition was out they were clamoring for
additional copies, and for the first time in years the alley door of
the _Bulletin_ was besieged by a seething mob of ragged, diminutive,
howling masculinity. Out on the street, however, they were not even
now calling the name of the paper. They were holding forth that black
first page and screaming just the name of
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