o it off your own
responsibility. If MacDonald were one of our party, I wouldn't make
use of it, if it were ten times over and over true. You'll have to be
very careful how you use that, at all! It's effective. I don't deny
it's very effective; but it's a pity! If you use that at all, you'll
have to use it so it's not libelous."

"Libelous?" burst out the handy man wakening up suddenly, scratching
his tousled head and trying to make head or tail of orders that said
'do it' and 'don't do it' in one breath. "I can write it without a
name so every man in the State will know who it is: give it as a joke;
fetch in Calamity as the mother of the whole mess; the call of the
blood, you know; reversion to type! They'll have to prove that the
intent was malice before they can get a judgment. They'll have to come
out with the truth before they can prove libel. It isn't libelous if
it's done as a joke without malice."

Moyese had flung himself down in his chair with a blow of his clenched
fist on the desk, when the opening of the office door stopped the oath
of disgust on his lips; and Eleanor MacDonald stood framed in the
yellow light shining in from the hot street. For a moment, the
transition from sun to shade blinded her. Then, she saw who was with
the Senator. Brydges sprang up waiting to return her recognition. She
made no sign. She walked over where he was standing. The Senator had
half risen from his desk. Was it the spirit of the ancestral Indian in
her eyes; or of the Man with the Iron Hand? Brydges' oily gloss went
to tallow under her look. Moyese knew looks that drilled; and Brydges
himself could bore behind for motives; but this look was not a drill:
it was a Search Light; and the handy man--well, perhaps, it was the
heat--the handy man suddenly wilted.

"You can go, Brydges," ordered Moyese.

"All right! See you again about that, Senator!" Brydges grabbed up
the loose notes from the desk and bolted, banging the door behind him.

The Senator's face seemed at once to age and trench with lines. He
motioned her to the vacated chair and remained bending forward over his
desk till she had seated herself. Then, he sat down, suddenly
remembered his hat, and laid it off. If she had sunk forward on the
desk weeping; if she had made a sign of appeal; he would have gone
round and caressed her and petted her and told her she must _stop_
Wayland. His whole manhood went out to comfort her, to stand betwee