ed Zoe. "He is dressing--and not in a very good
temper."

"Right!" said Sheard promptly, and laid the slip on the table. "'Phone me
if there is anything to come out. Good-bye."

Zoe was reading the proof when her father came in again.

"Newspaper men been here?" he drawled. "Thought so. What a poor old
addle-pated martyr I am."

"Listen," began Zoe, "this is an article all about you! It quotes Dr.
Herman Hertz, that is to say, it represents you as quoting him! It
says:--

"'The true Jew is an integral part of the life and spiritual endeavour
of every nation where Providence has allotted his home. And as for the
Jews of this Empire, which is earth's nearest realisation hitherto of
justice coupled with humanity, finely has a noble Anglo-Jewish soldier,
Colonel Goldschmidt, expressed it: "Loyalty to the flag for which the
sun once stood still can only deepen our devotion to the flag on which
the sun never sets."' Is that all right?"

"H'm!" said Oppner. "Have Rohscheimer and Jesson seen this article?"

"Don't know!" answered Zoe.

"Because," explained Oppner, "they've showed their blame devotion to the
flag on which the sun don't set, same as me, and if _they_ can stand it,
my hide's as tough as theirs, I reckon."

It was whilst Mr. Oppner was thus expressing himself that Sheard, who,
having left the proof at the Astoria, had raced back to the club to keep
an appointment, quitted the club again (his man had disappointed him),
and walked down the court to Fleet Street.

Mr. Aloys. X. Alden, arrayed in his capacious tweed suit, a Stetson felt
hat, and a pair of brogues with eloquent Broadway welts, liquidated the
business that had detained him in the "Cheshire Cheese" and drifted idly
in the same direction.

A taxi-driver questioned Sheard with his eyebrows, but the pressman,
after a moment's hesitancy, shook his head, and, suddenly running out
into the stream of traffic, swung himself on a westward bound bus.
Pausing in the act of lighting a Havana cigarette, Alden hailed the
disappointed taxi-driver and gave him rapid instructions. The
broad-brimmed Stetson disappeared within the cab, and the cab darted off
in the wake of the westward bound bus.

Such was the price that Mr. Thomas Sheard must pay for the reputation
won by his inspired articles upon Severac Bablon. For what he had learnt
of him during their brief association had enabled that clever journalist
to invest his copy with an atmosphere of "exclusiv