d wrong! How sick I am of it
all! It's the old experience, all over again, which I used to have as a
child with the Tom Smith paper crackers. You are fascinated by the
tinsel, and the colored paper, and the gaudy label. You think that when
you've dissected one, and pulled it all to pieces, you'll find a bugle
and a gold crown inside--because that's what it says on the box. But,
the first thing you know, you'll find yourself blowing on a tin whistle
and wearing a fool's cap of green paper! Lord! how the press of Kenton
City needs a _man_--a man with the courage and the power to show up the
scoundrels who are responsible for all this--McGrath and his associates,
I mean. I'm sick and tired of reporters whose rascality is self-evident,
of editors who are bought and sold like chattels, of a state of affairs,
in general, so infamous as to surpass expression! You have my sympathy,
Spencer--the sympathy of a fellow-victim. To be a reporter on a
newspaper which dictates dishonesty; to be the lieutenant of a Governor
who enjoins duplicity--it's all just about one and the same thing!"

"It's curious," commented Cavendish, "that it wasn't until about a week
after--after that night, that I knew you were Lieutenant-Governor. Then,
your name happened to be mentioned in the office, and somebody asked me
if I knew you."

"Whereupon," said Barclay, conquering the tie at last, and turning from
the mirror, "you had the inexpressible privilege of saying that you knew
me intimately."

"Whereupon," repeated Cavendish, in that so singular tone which had lain
heavy upon the other's memory, "I had the inexpressible privilege of
saying that I used to know you, but that we had quarreled, and were
now--strangers."

"Why?" demanded the Lieutenant-Governor, wheeling abruptly upon him.
"What possessed you to say such a silly thing as that?"

Cavendish leaned forward in his chair, with his elbows on his knees, and
his forehead against his interlaced fingers, staring at the floor.

"I'm glad, in a way, to have you ask that question," he said slowly. "We
are wary of mock heroics, or even real heroics, men like you and me. And
yet there are things which must be explained, things not easy to
explain, because they come so close at times to melodrama. I've always
had a horror of emotional situations; and, from what I know of you, I'm
sure you have, as well. I'd avoid this explanation, if I could--indeed,
I've deliberately avoided it, thus far. Yet if I