fused, and then added abruptly: "That's one
o' my investments."

"Why, Captain Jim, I never suspected that you"--

"Oh, I don't WRITE it," he interrupted hastily. "I only furnish the
money and the advertising, and run it gin'rally, you know; and I'm
responsible for it. And I select the eddyter--and"--he continued, with
a return of the same uneasy wistful look--"thar's suthin' in thet, you
know, eh?"

I was beginning to be perplexed. The memory evoked by the style of the
editorial writing and the presence of Captain Jim was assuming a
suspicious relationship to each other. "And who's your editor?" I
asked.

"Oh, he's--he's--er--Lacy Bassett," he replied, blinking his eyes with
a hopeless assumption of carelessness. "Let's see! Oh yes! You knowed
Lacy down there at Eureka. I disremembered it till now. Yes, sir!" he
repeated suddenly and almost rudely, as if to preclude any adverse
criticism, "he's the eddyter!"

To my surprise he was quite white and tremulous with nervousness. I was
very sorry for him, and as I really cared very little for the
half-forgotten escapade of his friend except so far as it seemed to
render HIM sensitive, I shook his hand again heartily and began to talk
of our old life in the gulch--avoiding as far as possible any allusion
to Lacy Bassett. His face brightened; his old simple cordiality and
trustfulness returned, but unfortunately with it his old disposition to
refer to Bassett. "Yes, they waz high old times, and ez I waz sayin'
to Lacy on'y yesterday, there is a kind o' freedom 'bout that sort o'
life that runs civilization and noospapers mighty hard, however
high-toned they is. Not but what Lacy ain't right," he added quickly,
"when he sez that the opposition the 'Guardian' gets here comes from
ignorant low-down fellers ez wos brought up in played-out camps, and
can't tell a gentleman and a scholar and a scientific man when they
sees him. No! So I sez to Lacy, 'Never you mind, it's high time they
did, and they've got to do it and to swaller the "Guardian," if I sink
double the money I've already put into the paper.'"

I was not long in discovering from other sources that the "Guardian"
was not popular with the more intelligent readers of Gilead, and that
Captain Jim's extravagant estimate of his friend was by no means
indorsed by the community. But criticism took a humorous turn even in
that practical settlement, and it appeared that Lacy Bassett's vanity,
assumption, and i