"you would help me to run it, I hope, but I would be
the editor. I have thought the matter over seriously, and I believe,
with competent help, I can make the paper an up-to-date, self-supporting
newspaper, in spite of my handicap."

Mr. Opp sat as if stunned by a blow. He had known for some time that he
must sell the paper in order to meet his obligations, but the thought of
relinquishing his control of it never dawned upon him. It was the pride
of his heart, the one tangible achievement in a wilderness of dreams.
Life without Guinevere had seemed a desert; life without "The Opp
Eagle" seemed chaos. He looked up bewildered.

"We'd continue on doing business here in the regular way?" he asked.

"No," said Hinton; "I would build a larger office uptown, and put in new
presses; we could experiment with your new patent type-setter as soon as
you got it ready."

But Mr. Opp was beyond pleasantries. "You'd keep Nick?" he asked. "I
wouldn't consider anything that would cut Nick out."

"By all means," said Hinton. "I'm counting on you and Nick to initiate
me into the mysteries of the profession. You could be city editor, and
Nick--well, we could make him foreman."

One last hope was left to Mr. Opp, and he clung to it desperately, not
daring to voice it until the end.

"The name," he said faintly, "would of course remain 'The Opp Eagle'?"

Hinton dropped his eyes; he could not stand the wistful appeal in the
drawn face opposite.

"No," he said shortly; "that's a--little too personal. I think I should
call my paper 'The Weekly News.'"

Mr. Opp could never distinctly remember what happened after that. He
knew that he had at first declined the offer, that he had been argued
with, had reconsidered, and finally accepted a larger sum than he had
asked for; but the details of the transaction were like the setting of
bones after an accident.

He remembered that he had sat where Hinton left him, staring at the
floor until Nick came to close the office; then he had a vague
impression of crossing the fields and standing with his head against the
old sycamore-tree where the birds had once whispered of love. After that
he knew that he had met Hinton and Guinevere coming up the river road
hand in hand, that he had gotten home after supper was over, and had
built a bridge of blocks for Miss Kippy.

Then suddenly he had wakened to full consciousness, staggered out of the
house to the woodshed, and shivered down into a miserable h