understanding of the
facts as they actually exist. You and I stay so close inside of four
walls here that we are apt to get out of touch with practical
conditions. Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to get new facts, from a
confidential and highly authoritative source. In the light of these--I
wish I could explain them more fully to you, but I was pledged to
secrecy--I am obliged to tell you that what you had written seemed to me
altogether out of focus, unfair, and extreme."

"Did you get these facts, as you call them, from Plonny Neal?"

"As to that, I am at liberty to say nothing."

Queed, looking at him, saw that he had. He began to feel sorry for West.

"I would give four hundred and fifty dollars," he said slowly--"all the
money that I happen to have--if you had told me last night that you
meant to do this."

"I am awfully sorry," said West, with a touch of dignity, "that you take
it so hard. But I assure you--"

"I know Plonny Neal even better than you do," continued Queed, "for I
have known him as his social equal. He is laughing at you to-day."

West, of course, knew better than that. The remark confirmed his belief
that Queed had brooded over the reformatory till he saw everything about
it distorted and magnified.

"Well, old fellow," he said, without a trace of ill-humor in his voice
or his manner, "then it is I he is laughing at--not you. That brings us
right back to my point. If you feel, as I understand it, that the _Post_
is in the position of having deserted its own cause, I alone am the
deserter. Don't you see that? Not only am I the editor of the paper, and
so responsible for all that it says; but I wrote the article, on my own
best information and judgment. Whatever consequences there are," said
West, his thoughts on the consequences most likely to accrue to the
saviour of the party, "I assume them all."

"A few people," said Queed, slowly, "know that I have been conducting
this fight for the _Post_. They may not understand that I was suddenly
superseded this morning. But of course it isn't that. It is simply a
matter--"

"Believe me, it can all be made right. I shall take the greatest
pleasure in explaining to your friends that I alone am responsible. I
shall call to-day--right now--at--"

"I'm sorry," said Queed, abruptly, "but it is entirely impossible for me
to remain."

West looked, and felt, genuinely distressed. "I wish," he said, "the old
reformatory had never been born"; and he