t, but tenderly nurtured
in the ambitious breast of Tertius C. Marrineal. From the gently smiling
patriarch he received as much of the unwritten records as that authority
deemed it expedient to give him, together with an admonition, thrown in
for good measure.

"Dangerous, my young friend! Dangerous!"

The passionate and patient collector thought it highly probable that
Willis Enderby would be dangerous game. Certainly he did not intend to
hunt in those fields, unless he could contrive a weapon of overwhelming
caliber.

Ely Ives's analysis of Banneker's situation was in a measure responsible
for Marrineal's proposition of the new deal to his editor.

"He has accepted it," the owner told his purveyor of information. "But
the real fight is to come."

"Over the policy of the editorial page," opined Ives.

"Yes. This is only a truce."

As a truce Banneker also regarded it. He had no desire to break it. Nor,
after it was established, did Marrineal make any overt attempt to
interfere with his conduct of his column.

After awaiting gage of battle from his employer, in vain, Banneker
decided to leave the issue to chance. Surely he was not surrendering any
principle, since he continued to write as he chose upon whatever topics
he selected. Time enough to fight when there should be urged upon him
either one of the cardinal sins of journalism, the _suppressio veri_ or
the _suggestio falsi_, which he had more than once excoriated in other
papers, to the pious horror of the hush-birds of the craft who had
chattered and cheeped accusations of "fouling one's own nest."

Opportunity was not lacking to Marrineal for objections to a policy
which made powerful enemies for the paper; Banneker, once assured of his
following, had hit out right and left. From being a weak-kneed and
rather apologetic defender of the "common people," The Patriot had
become, logically, under Banneker's vigorous and outspoken policy, a
proponent of the side of labor against capital. It had hotly supported
two important and righteous local strikes and been the chief agent in
winning one. With equal fervor it had advocated a third strike whose
justice was at best dubious and had made itself anathema, though the
strike was lost, to an industrial group which was honestly striving to
live up to honorable standards. It had offended a powerful ring of
bankers and for a time embarrassed Marrineal in his loans. It had
threatened editorial reprisals upon a combi