When the meal was about half over, Queed said:—­

“You slept badly last night, didn’t you?”

“Yes—­my old enemy.  The attack soon passed.  However, you may be sure that it is a comfort at such times to know that I am not alone.”

“If you should need any—­ahem—­assistance, I assume that you will call me,” said Queed, after a pause.

“Thank you.  You can hardly realize what your presence here, your companionship and, I hope I may say, your friendship, mean to me.”

Queed glanced at him over the table, and hastily turned his glance away.  He had surprised Nicolovius looking at him with a curiously tender look in his black diamond eyes.

The young man went to the office that night, worried by two highly irritating ideas.  One was that Nicolovius was most unjustifiably permitting himself to become dependent upon him.  The other was that it was very peculiar that a Fenian refugee should care to express slanderous views of the soldiers of a Lost Cause.  Both thoughts, once introduced into the young man’s mind, obstinately stuck there.

XX

Meeting of the Post Directors to elect a Successor to Colonel Cowles; Charles Gardiner West’s Sensible Remarks on Mr. Queed; Mr. West’s Resignation from Old Blaines College, and New Consecration to the Uplift.

The Post directors gathered in special meeting on Monday.  Their first act was to adopt some beautiful resolutions, prepared by Charles Gardiner West, in memory of the editor who had served the paper so long and so well.  Next they changed the organization of the staff, splitting the late Colonel’s heavy duties in two, by creating the separate position of managing editor; this official to have complete authority over the news department of the paper, as the editor had over its editorial page.  The directors named Evan Montague, the able city editor of the Post, to fill the new position, while promoting the strongest of the reporters to fill the city desk.

The chairman, Stewart Byrd, then announced that he was ready to receive nominations for, or hear discussion about, the editorship.

One of the directors, Mr. Hopkins, observed that, as he viewed it, the directors should not feel restricted to local timber in the choice of a successor to the Colonel.  He said that the growing importance of the Post entitled it to an editor of the first ability, and that the directors should find such a one, whether in New York, or Boston, or San Francisco.

Another director, Mr. Boggs, remarked that it did not necessarily follow that a thoroughly suitable man must be a New York, Boston, or San Francisco man.  Unless he was greatly deceived, there was an eminently suitable man, not merely in the city, but in the office of the Post, where, since Colonel Cowles’s death, he was doing fourteen hours of excellent work per day for the sum of fifteen hundred dollars per annum.