Elias M., didn't you?"

"Yes, sir. We went and did it."

The Doctor shook his head, looking at the other through narrowing eyes.
"And it's worrying you. You're not looking right."

"Oh, I'm well enough: a little sleeplessness, that's all."

He did not deem it necessary to tell his father that upon his white
nights the unforgettable face of Esme Elliot had gleamed persistently
from out the darkness, banishing rest.

"Suppose you let me do some of the worrying, Boyee."

"Haven't you enough troubles in your own business, Dad?" smiled Hal.

"Machinery, son. Automatic, at that. Runs itself and turns out the
dollars, regular, for breakfast. Very different from the newspaper
game."

"I _should_ like your advice."

"On the take-it-or-leave-it principle, I suppose," answered Dr.
Surtaine, with entire good humor. "In the Pierce matter you left it. How
do you like the results?"

"Not very much."

Dr. Surtaine spread out upturned hands, in dumb, oracular illustration
of his own sagacity.

"But I'd do the same thing over again if it came up for decision."

"That's exactly what you mustn't do, Hal. Banging around the shop like
that, cracking people on the knuckles may give you a temporary feeling
of power and importance" (Hal flushed boyishly), "but it don't pay. Now,
if I get you out of this scrape, I want you to go more carefully."

"How are you going to get me out of it?"

"Square it with E.M. Pierce. He's a good friend of mine."

"Do you really like Mr. Pierce, Dad?"

"Hm! Ah--er--well, Boyee, as for that, that's another tail on a cat. In
a business way, I meant."

"In a business way he's trying to be a pretty efficient enemy of mine.
How would you like it if he undertook to interfere with Certina?"

By perceptible inches Dr. Surtaine's chest rounded in slow expansion.
"Legislatures and government bureaus have tried that. They never got
away with it yet. Elias Pierce is a pretty big man in this town, but I
guess he knows enough to keep hands and tongue off me."

"If not off your line of business," amended Ellis. "Did you see his
interview in the 'Telegram'?"

He tossed over a copy of the paper folded to a column wherein Mr.
Pierce, with more temper than tact, had possessed himself of his
adversary's editorial text, "Heredity," and proceeded to perform a
variant thereon.

"If this young whippersnapper," Mr. Pierce had said, "this fledgling
thug of journalism, had stopped to think of the source of his u