Rev. Mr. Dayne, Secretary of the Department of Charities; he had learned
that the reformatory bill was to be called up in the house next day. The
double-faced politicians of the machine, said Mr. Dayne, with their
pretended zeal for economy, were desperately afraid of the Post. Would
Mr. Queed be kind enough to hit a final ringing blow for the right in
to-morrow's paper?

"That our position to-day is as strong as it is," said the kind, firm
voice, "is due largely to your splendid work, Mr. Queed. I say this
gladly, and advisedly. If you will put your shoulder to the wheel just
once more, I am confident that you will push us through. I shall be
eternally grateful, and so will the State. For it is a question of
genuine moral importance to us all."

Mr. Dayne received assurance that Mr. Queed would do all that he could
for him. He left the telephone rather wishing that the assistant editor
could sometimes be inspired into verbal enthusiasm. But of his abilities
the Secretary did not entertain the smallest doubt, and he felt that day
that his long fight for the reformatory was as good as won.

Hanging up the receiver, Queed leaned back in his swivel chair and
thoughtfully filled a pipe, which he smoked nowadays with an experienced
and ripened pleasure. At once he relapsed into absorbed thought. Though
he answered Mr. Dayne calmly and briefly according to his wont, the
young man's heart was beating faster with the knowledge that he stood
at the crisis of his longest and dearest editorial fight. He expected to
win it. The whole subject, from every conceivable point of view, was at
his fingers' ends. He knew exactly what to say; his one problem was how
to say it in the most irresistible way possible.

Yet Queed, tilted back in his chair, and staring out over the wet roofs,
was not thinking of the reformatory. He was thinking, not of public
matters at all, but of the circumstances of his curious life with Henry
G. Surface; and his thoughts were not agreeable in the least.

Not that he and the "old professor" did not get along well together. It
was really surprising how well they did get along. Their dynamic
interview of last June had at once been buried out of sight, and since
then their days had flowed along with unbroken smoothness. If there had
been times when the young man's thought recoiled from the compact and
the intimacy, his manner never betrayed any sign of it. On the contrary,
he found himself mysteriously answe