the Southern Confederacy was defeated, and turned your
attention to a few things that have occurred subsequently? Why didn't
you write this story? Why didn't you tell me, so that I could write it?
Why didn't----Oh, what's the use!"

The major straightened himself up.

"Sir," he said, "allow me to correct you in regard to a plain
misstatement of fact. Sir, the Southern Confederacy was never defeated.
It ceased to exist as a nation because we were exhausted--because our
devastated country was exhausted. Another thing, sir, I am employed upon
this paper, I gainsay you, as a reporter, not as a scandal monger. I
would be the last to give circulation in the public prints to another
gentleman's domestic unhappiness. I regard it as highly improper that a
gentleman's private affairs should be aired in a newspaper under any
circumstances."

And with that he bowed and turned on his heel and went out, leaving
Devore shaking all over with the superhuman task of trying to hold
himself in. About ten minutes later, when I came out bound for my
boarding house, the major was standing at the front door. He looped one
of his absurdly small fingers into one of my buttonholes.

"Our city editor means well, no doubt," he said, "but he doesn't
understand, he doesn't appreciate our conceptions of these matters. He
was born on the other side of the river, you know," he said as though
that explained everything. Then his tone changed and anxiety crept into
it. "Do you think that I went too far? Do you think I ought to return to
him and apologize to him for the somewhat hasty and abrupt manner of
speech I used just now?"

I told him no--I didn't know what might happen if he went back in there
then--and I persuaded him that Devore didn't expect any apology; and
with that he seemed better satisfied and walked off. As I stood there
watching him, his stiff old back growing smaller as he went away from
me, I didn't know which I blamed the more, Devore for his malignant,
cold disdain of the major, or the major for his blatant stupidity. And
right then and there, all of a sudden, there came to me an understanding
of a thing that had been puzzling me all these weeks. Often I had
wondered how the major had endured Devore's contempt. I had decided in
my own mind that he must be blind to it, else he would have shown
resentment. But now I knew the answer. The major wasn't blind, he was
afraid; as the saying goes, he was afraid of his job. He needed it; h