was a pause: then, "You'll come to see me--when you can?"

"To-morrow," said he. "No--to-day. I forgot."

They both laughed uncertainly, and bade each other good-night.

Hal stayed through until the last proof. In the hallway a heavy figure
lifted itself from a chair in a corner as he came out.

"Dad!" exclaimed Hal.

"I thought I'd wait," said the charlatan wistfully.

No other word was necessary. "I'll be glad to be home again," said Hal.
"You can lend me some pajamas?"

"They're laid out on your bed. Every night."

The two men passed down the stairs, arm in arm. At the door they paused.
Through the building ran a low tremor, waxing to a steady thrill. The
presses were throwing out to the world once again their irrevocable
message of fact and fate.

CHAPTER XXXV

TEMPERED METAL

Monday's newspapers startled Hal Surtaine. Despite the sympathetic
attitude expressed after the riot by the other newspaper men, he had not
counted upon the unanimous vigor with which the local press took up the
cudgels for the "Clarion." That potent and profound guild-fellowship of
newspaperdom, which, when once aroused, overrides all individual rivalry
and jealousy, had never before come into the young editor's experience.

To his fellow editors the issue was quite clear. Here was an attack, not
upon one newspaper alone, but upon the principle of journalistic
independence. Little as the "Banner," the "Press," the "Telegram," and
their like had practiced independence of thought or writing, they could
both admire and uphold it in another. Their support was as genuine as it
was generous. The police department, and, indeed, the whole city
administration of Worthington, came in for scathing and universal
denunciation, in that they had failed to protect the "Clarion" against
the mob's advance.

The evening papers got out special bulletins on McGuire Ellis. None too
hopeful they were, for the fighting journalist, after a brief rally, had
sunk into a condition where life was the merest flicker. Always a
picturesque and well-liked personality, Ellis now became a species of
popular hero. Sympathy centralized on him, and through him attached
temporarily to the "Clarion" itself, which he now typified in the public
imagination. His condition, indeed, was just so much sentimental capital
to the paper, as the Honorable E.M. Pierce savagely put it to William
Douglas. Nevertheless, the two called at the hospital to make polite
inquir