up. That made the scandal
that had been brewing and steeping and simmering for months all the
bigger when finally it came to a boil. When young Buford Castleton got
his eyes open and became aware of what everybody else had known for a
year or more, and when the rival evening paper came out in its last
edition with the full particulars, we, over in the Evening Press shop,
were plastered with shame, for we didn't have a line of it.

A stranger dropping in just about that time would have been justified in
thinking there was a corpse laid out in the plant somewhere, and that
all the members of the city staff were sitting up with the remains. As
luck would have it, it wasn't a stranger that dropped in on our grand
lodge of sorrow. It was Major Putnam Stone, and as he entered the door
he caught the tag end of what one of us was saying.

"I gather," he said in that large round voice of his, "that you young
gentlemen are discussing the unhappy affair which, I note, is mentioned
with such signally poor taste in the columns of our sensational
contemporary. I may state that I knew of this contemplated divorce
action yesterday. Mr. Buford Castleton, Senior, was my informant."

"What!" Devore almost yelled it. He had the love of a true city editor
for his paper, and the love of a mother for her child or a miser for his
gold is no greater love than that, let me tell you. "You knew about this
thing here?" He beat with two fingers that danced like the prongs of a
tuning fork on the paper spread out in front of him. "You knew it
yesterday?"

"Certainly," said the major. "The elder Mr. Castleton bared the truly
distressing details to me at the Shawnee Club."

"In confidence though--he told you about it in confidence, didn't he,
major?" said Ike Webb, trying to save the old fellow.

But the major besottedly wouldn't be saved.

"Absolutely not," he said. "There were several of us present, at least
three other gentlemen whose names I cannot now recall. Mr. Castleton
made the disclosure as though he wished it to be known among his
friends and his son's friends. It was quite evident to all of us that he
was entirely out of sympathy with the lady who is his daughter-in-law."

Devore forced himself to be calm. It was almost as though he sat on
himself to hold himself down in his chair; but when he spoke his voice
ran up and down the scales quiveringly.

"Major," he said, "don't you think it would be a good idea if you would
admit that