stand; or peddle milk?" Joe had answered the distracted
question with a lighter hearted laugh than she had heard for many a
day. Then he had gone off to catch Wayland.

But Eleanor did not know all this. Her quick wit grasped one salient
fact. You think, perhaps, it was that Wayland had been dismissed? It
wasn't.

"You mean that you have lost your position because of the evidence you
gave for us?"

Then the news editor did what he always told his underlings not to do
and to do--"Never lie; but if you have to, lie like a gentleman."

"Not at all, Miss MacDonald! I got fired because I told the truth! If
I had given evidence that was simply in your favor, I'd deserve to be
fired; but it was only a matter of somebody letting in a little honest
daylight. I told Wayland at the time that I'd cooked my dough! Funny
enough, the wire that came firing me this morning was immediately
followed by a wire from Washington announcing that he has been
dismissed for taking three weeks' absence without leave. We got it in
the neck together, Miss MacDonald, and I thought maybe Wayland would be
game enough to have a--a--a shake with me over it."

"Yes, a shake," smiled Eleanor. "I'd like to mix it for you!"

The news editor suddenly lost all shyness, burst out laughing, leaned
forward and shook hands.

"Don't know whether you know it or not," he went on, "but about a month
ago one of those d--I beg your pardon, Miss MacDonald, Down-East
scribblerettes, that come out to see the West from a Pullman car window
and put things right, passed through here. Somebody got him and filled
him up pretty full with a lot of lies about Wayland--"

"You mean Brydges gave him the facts?" asked Eleanor.

"Well, maybe, Brydges may have had him out in the forty horse power
car! He sent a lot of awful rot East! That wasn't the worst of it.
You'd think the Eastern fellows would know the difference between a
maverick and a long-horn! He's been going round to the Eastern editors
giving them doped stuff, lies dated out here written right down in New
York! They've been hammering the Forest Service for the last month!
I'll bet that dough-head never put a foot in National Forests once
while he was West: rot about running off settlers, and shutting down
mines, and hampering lumbering operations, and low down personal stuff!
Anyway, between lies and dope, they've got Wayland! He's fired! I've
been trying to get hold of him all day. Your old m