shirt-sleeves; his movements were
resolute, his mouth firm and his tones final; but his round, rather
babyish blue eyes had a bewildered and even wistful look that rather
contradicted all this. Nor indeed was the expression altogether
misleading. It might truly be said of him, as for many journalists in
authority, that his most familiar emotion was one of continuous fear;
fear of libel actions, fear of lost advertisements, fear of misprints,
fear of the sack.

His life was a series of distracted compromises between the proprietor
of the paper (and of him), who was a senile soap-boiler with three
ineradicable mistakes in his mind, and the very able staff he had
collected to run the paper; some of whom were brilliant and experienced
men and (what was even worse) sincere enthusiasts for the political
policy of the paper.

A letter from one of these lay immediately before him, and rapid and
resolute as he was, he seemed almost to hesitate before opening it. He
took up a strip of proof instead, ran down it with a blue eye, and a
blue pencil, altered the word "adultery" to the word "impropriety,"
and the word "Jew" to the word "Alien," rang a bell and sent it flying
upstairs.

Then, with a more thoughtful eye, he ripped open the letter from his
more distinguished contributor, which bore a postmark of Devonshire, and
read as follows:

DEAR NUTT,--As I see you're working Spooks and Dooks at the same time,
what about an article on that rum business of the Eyres of Exmoor; or
as the old women call it down here, the Devil's Ear of Eyre? The head of
the family, you know, is the Duke of Exmoor; he is one of the few really
stiff old Tory aristocrats left, a sound old crusted tyrant it is quite
in our line to make trouble about. And I think I'm on the track of a
story that will make trouble.

Of course I don't believe in the old legend about James I; and as for
you, you don't believe in anything, not even in journalism. The legend,
you'll probably remember, was about the blackest business in English
history--the poisoning of Overbury by that witch's cat Frances Howard,
and the quite mysterious terror which forced the King to pardon the
murderers. There was a lot of alleged witchcraft mixed up with it; and
the story goes that a man-servant listening at the keyhole heard the
truth in a talk between the King and Carr; and the bodily ear with which
he heard grew large and monstrous as by magic, so awful was the secret.
And though h