"Look at it! Look at this ad.--and
this--and this." The paper was rent with the vehemence of his
indication. "Put my copy next to that, and it'd come to life and squirm
to get away."

"Nothing there but what every paper takes," defended Ellis.

"Every paper'd be glad to take my stuff, too. Why, Streaky Mountain copy
is the Holy Bible compared to what you've got here. Take a slant at
this: 'Consumption Cured in Three Months.'--'Cancer Cured or your Money
Back.'--Catarrh dopes, headache cures, germ-killers, baby-soothers,
nerve-builders,--the whole stinkin' lot. Don't I know 'em! Either sugar
pills that couldn't cure a belly-ache, or hell's-brew of morphine and
booze. Certina ain't the worst of 'em, any more than it's the best. I
may squeeze a few dollars out of easy boobs, but you, Andy Certain, you
and your young whelp here, you're playin' the poor suckers for their
lives. And then you're too lily-fingered to touch a mining proposition
because there's a gamble in it!"

He crumpled the paper in his sinewy hands, hurled it to the floor,
kicked it high over Dr. Surtaine's head, and stalking across to Hal's
desk, slapped down his proofs on it with a violence that jarred the
whole structure.

"You run that," he snarled, "or I'll hire the biggest hall in
Worthington and tell the whole town what I've just been telling you."

His face, furrowed and threatening, was thrust down close to Hal's. Thus
lowered, the eyes came level with a strip of print, pasted across the
inner angle of the desk.

"'Whose Bread I Eat, his Song I Sing,'" he read. "What's that?"

"A motto," said McGuire Ellis. "The complete guide to correct
journalistic conduct. Put there, lest we forget."

"H'm!" said McQuiggan, puzzled. "It's in the right place, all right, all
right. Well, does my ad. go?"

"No," said Hal. "But I'm much obliged to you, McQuiggan."

"You go to hell. What're you obliged to me for?" said the visitor
suspiciously.

"For the truth. I think you've told it to me. Anyway you've made me tell
it to myself."

"I guess I ain't told you much you don't know about your snide
business."

"You have, though. Go ahead and hire your hall. But--take a look at
to-morrow's 'Clarion' before you make your speech. Now, good-day to
you."

McQuiggan, wondering and a little subdued by a certain quiet resolution
in Hal's speech, went, beckoning Ellis after him for explication. Hal
turned to his father.

"I don't suppose," he began haltingly,