him, and when he
gets able to read, it'll hurt him bad. Mighty few knew how much pride he
had in it. Has it struck you that now would be a precious good time for
it to occur to Rod McCune to come out of his hole? Suppose we go by the
board, what's to stop him? What's to stop him, anyway? Who knows where
the boss put those copies and affidavits, and if we did know, would we
know the best way to use 'em? If we did, what's to keep the 'Herald'
alive until McCune lifts his head? And if we don't stop him, the 'Carlow
County Herald' is finished. Something's got to be done!'"

No one realized this more poignantly than Mr. Fisbee, but no one was
less capable of doing something of his own initiation. And although
the Tuesday issue was forthcoming, embarrassingly pale in spots--most
spots--Mr. Martin remarked rather publicly that the items were not what
you might call stirring, and that the unpatented pages put him in mind
of Jones's field in winter with a dozen chunks of coal dropped in the
snow. And his observations on the later issues of the week (issues which
were put forth with a suggestion of spasm, and possibly to the permanent
injury of Mr. Parker's health, he looked so thin) were too cruelly
unkind to be repeated here. Indeed, Mr. Fisbee, Parker, the luckless Mr.
Schofield, and the young Tipworthy may be not untruthfully likened to
a band of devoted mariners lost in the cold and glaring regions of a
journalistic Greenland: limitless plains of empty white paper extending
about them as far as the eye could reach, while life depended upon their
making these terrible voids productive; and they shrank appalled from
the task, knowing no means to fertilize the barrens; having no talent to
bring the still snows into harvests, and already feeling-in the chill of
Mr. Martin's remarks--a touch of the frost that might wither them.

It was Fisbee who caught the first glimpse of a relief expedition
clipping the rough seas on its lively way to rescue them, and, although
his first glimpse of the jaunty pennant of the relieving vessels was
over the shoulder of an iceberg, nothing was surer than that the craft
was flying to them with all good and joyous speed. The iceberg just
mentioned assumed--by no melting process, one may be sure--the form of a
long letter, first postmarked at Rouen, and its latter substance was as
follows:

"Henry and I have always believed you as selfish, James Fisbee, as
you are self-ingrossed and incapable. Sh