The Colonel stared at him, bewildered.

“I decided to learn editorial-writing—­as the term is understood,” Queed reluctantly explained.  “Therefore, I have been sitting up till two o’clock in the mornings, studying the files of the Post, to see exactly how you did it.”

The Colonel’s gaze gradually softened.  “You might have been worse employed; I compliment and congratulate you,” said he; and then added:  “Whether you have really caught the idea and mastered the technique or not, it is too soon to say.  But I’ll say frankly that this article is worth more to me than everything else that you’ve written for the Post put together.”

“I am—­ahem—­gratified that you are pleased with it.”

The Colonel, whose glance had gone out of the window, swung around in his chair and smote the table a testy blow.

“For the Lord’s sake,” he exploded, “get some heat in you!  Squirt some color into your way of looking at things!  Be kind and good-natured in your heart—­just as I am at this moment—­but for heaven’s sake learn to write as if you were mad, and only kept from yelling by phenomenal will-power.”

This was in early May.  Many other talks upon the art of editorial writing did the two have, as the days went.  The Colonel, mystified but pleased by revelations of actuality and life in his heretofore too-embalmed assistant, found an increasing interest in developing him.  Here was a youth, with the qualities of potential great valuableness, and the wise editor, as soon as this appeared, gave him his chance by calling him off the fields of taxation and currency and assigning him to topics plucked alive from the day’s news.

On the fatal 15th of May, the Colonel told Queed merely that the Post desired his work as long as it showed such promise as it now showed.  That was all the talk about the dismissal that ever took place between them.  The Colonel was no believer in fulsome praise for the young.  But to others he talked more freely, and this was how it happened that the daughter of his old friend John Randolph Weyland knew that Mr. Queed was slated for an early march upstairs.

For Queed the summer had been a swift and immensely busy one.  To write editorials that have a relation with everyday life, it gradually became clear to him that the writer must himself have some such relation.  In June the Mercury Athletic Association had been thoroughly reorganized and rejuvenated, and regular meets were held every Saturday night.  At Trainer Klinker’s command, Queed had resolutely permitted himself to be inducted into the Mercury; moreover, he made it a point of honor to attend the Saturday night functions, where he had the ideal chance to match his physical competence against that of other men.  Early in the sessions at the gymnasium, Buck had introduced his pupil to boxing-glove and punching-bag, his own special passions, and now his orders ran that the Doc should put on the gloves with