lovely in its anger and chagrin, and wearing
that set and desperate smile! Well, there was but one answer to her
note. That was to make the "Clarion" all that she would have it not be!

No phantoms of lost loveliness came between McGuire Ellis and his
satisfaction over the Pierce _coup_. Characteristically, however, he
presented the disadvantageous as well as the favorable aspects of the
matter to his employer.

"Some paper this morning!" he began. "The town is humming like a hive."

"Over the Pierce story?" asked Hal.

"Nothing else talked of. We were sold out before nine this morning."

"Selling papers is our line of business," observed the owner-editor.

"You won't think so when you hear Shad Shearson. He's an avalanche of
woe, waiting to sweep down upon you."

"What's his trouble? The department store advertising?"

"The Boston Store advertising is gone. Others are threatening to follow.
Pierce has called a meeting of the Publications Committee of the Dry
Goods Union. Discipline is in the air, Boss. Have you seen the evening
papers?"

"Yes."

"What did you think of their stories of the accident?"

"I seemed to notice a suspicious similarity."

"You can bet every one of those stories came straight from E.M. Pierce's
own office. You'll see, they'll be the same in to-morrow morning's
papers. Now that we've opened up, they all have to cover the news, so
they've thoughtfully sent around to inquire what Elias M. would like to
have printed."

"From what they say," remarked Hal flippantly, "the nurse ought to be
arrested for trying to bump a sixty-horsepower car out of the roadway."

"We strive to please, in the local newspaper shops."

Ellis turned to answer the buzzing telephone. "Get on your life
preserver," he advised his principal. "Shearson's coming up to weep all
over you."

The advertising manager entered, his plump cheeks sagging into
lugubrious and reproachful lines, speaking witnesses to a sentiment not
wholly unjustifiable in his case. To see circulation steadily going up
and advertising as steadily going down, is an irritant experience to the
official responsible for the main income of a daily paper, advertising
revenue.

"Advertisers have some rights," he boomed, in his heavy voice.

"Including that of homicide?" asked Hal.

"Let the law take care of that. It ain't our affair."

"Would it be our affair if Pierce didn't control advertising?"

Shearson's fat hands went to his fat neck i