“I’m not sure that I understand what he means,” said Miss Van Arsdale, “but it has a sinister sound.”

“Are Baal’s other names Bribery and Blackmail?” glowered Edmonds.

“There has never been a hint of any illegitimate use of the paper, so far as I can discover.  Yet it’s pretty plain to me that he intends to use it as an instrument.”

“As soon as we’ve made it strong enough,” supplied Edmonds.

“An instrument of what?” inquired Miss Van Arsdale.

“Power for himself.  Political, I suppose.”

“Does he want office?” she asked.

“Perhaps.  Perhaps he prefers the deeper-lying power to make and unmake politicians.  We’ve done it already in a few cases.  That’s Edmonds’s specialty.  I’ll know within a few days what Marrineal wants, if I can get a showdown.  He and I are coming to a new basis of finance.”

“Yes; he thinks he can’t afford to keep on paying you by circulation.  You’re putting on too much.”  This from Edmonds.

“That’s what he got me here for.  However, I don’t really believe he can.  I’m eating up what should be the paper’s legitimate profits.  And yet”—­he smiled radiantly—­“there are times when I don’t see how I’m going to get along with what I have.  It’s pretty absurd, isn’t it, to feel pinched on fifty thousand a year, when I did so well at Manzanita on sixty a month?”

“It’s a fairy-tale,” declared Miss Van Arsdale.  “I knew that you were going to arrive sooner or later, Ban.  But this isn’t an arrival.  It’s a triumph.”

“Say rather it’s a feat of balancing,” he propounded.  “A tight-rope stunt on a gilded rope.  Failure on one side; debt on the other.  Keep going like the devil to save yourself from falling.”

“What is it making of him, Mr. Edmonds?” Banneker’s oldest friend turned her limpid and anxious regard upon his closest friend.

“A power.  Oh, it’s real enough, all this empire of words that crumbles daily.  It leaves something behind, a little residue of thought, ideals, convictions.  What do you fear for him?”

“Cynicism,” she breathed uneasily.

“It’s the curse of the game.  But it doesn’t get the worker who feels his work striking home.”

“Do you see any trace of cynicism in the paper?” asked Banneker curiously.

“All this blaring and glaring and froth and distortion,” she replied, sweeping her hand across the issue which lay on the desk before her.  “Can you do that sort of thing and not become that sort of thing?”

“Ask Edmonds,” said Banneker.

“Thirty years I’ve been in this business,” said the veteran slowly.  “I suppose there are few of its problems and perplexities that I haven’t been up against.  And I tell you, Miss Van Arsdale, all this froth and noise and sensationalism doesn’t matter.  It’s an offense to taste, I know.  But back of it is the big thing that we’re trying to do; to enlist the ignorant and helpless and teach