ature
in the wording.

"It might be made worth your while."

"All right; I'm hired."

"That's good," said Hal heartily. "I think you'll find I'm not hard to
get along with."

"I think _you'll_ find _I_ am," replied the other with some grimness.
"But I know the game. Well, let's get down to cases. What do you want to
do with the 'Clarion'?"

"Make it the cleanest, decentest newspaper in the city."

"Then you don't think it's that, now."

"No. I know it isn't."

"Did you get that from Dr. Surtaine?"

"Partly."

"What's the other part?"

"First-hand impressions. I've been going through the files."

"When?"

"Since nine o'clock this morning."

"With what idea?"

"Why, having bought a piece of property, I naturally want to know about
it."

"Been through the plant yet? That's your property, too."

"No. I thought I'd find out more from the files. I've bought a
newspaper, not a building."

The characteristic grunt with which Ellis favored his employer in reply
to this seemed to have a note of approval in it.

"Well; now that you own the 'Clarion,'" he said after a pause, "what do
you think of it?"

"It's yellow, and it's sensational, and--it's vulgar."

There was nothing complimentary in the other's snort this time.

"Of course it's vulgar. You can't sell a sweet-scented, prim old-maidy
newspaper to enough people to pay for the z's in one font of type.
People are vulgar. Don't forget that. And you've got to make a
newspaper to suit them. Lesson Number One."

"It needn't be a muckraking paper, need it, forever smelling out
something rotten, and exploiting it in big headlines?"

"Oh, that's all bluff," replied the journalist easily. "We never turn
loose on anything but the surface of things. Why, if any one started in
really to muckrake this old respectable burg, the smell would drive most
of our best citizens to the woods."

"Frankly, Mr. Ellis, I don't like cheap cynicism."

"Prefer to be fed up on pleasant lies?" queried his employee, unmoved.

"Not that either. I can take an unpleasant truth as well as the next
man. But it's got to be the truth."

"Do you know the nickname of this paper?"

"Yes. My father told me of it."

"It was his set that pinned it on us. 'The Daily Carrion,' they call us,
and they said that our triumphal roosters ought to be vultures. Do you
know why?"

"In plain English because of the paper's lies and blackguardism."

"In plainer English, because of its truth