at the Emporium contains some good bargains”; and “Scheffler and Mintz’s ‘furniture week’ is worth attention, particularly in the rocking-chair and dining-set lines”—­might appear some such information as this:  “In the special bargain sale of ribbons at the Emporium the prices are slightly higher than the same lines sold for last week, on the regular counter”; or, “The heavily advertised antique rug collection at the Triangle is mostly fraudulent.  With a dozen exceptions the rugs are modern and of poor quality”; or, “The Boston Shop’s special sale of rain coats are mostly damaged goods.  Accept none without guarantee.”

Never before had mercantile Worthington known anything like this.  Something not unlike panic was created in commercial circles.  Lawyers were hopefully consulted, but ascertained in the first stages of investigation, that wherever a charge of fraud was brought, the “Clarion” office actually had the goods, by purchase.  All this was costly to the “Clarion.”  But it added nearly four thousand solid circulation, of the buying class, a class of the highest value to any advertiser.  Only with difficulty and by exercise of pressure on the part of E.M.  Pierce, were the weaker members among the withdrawing advertisers dissuaded from resuming their patronage of the “Clarion.”

“I wouldn’t have thought it possible,” said the dictator, angrily, to his associates.  “The thing is getting dangerous.  The damned paper is out for the truth.”

“And the public is finding it out,” supplemented Gibbs, his brother-in-law.

“Wait till my libel suit comes on,” said Pierce grimly.  “I don’t believe young Mr. Surtaine will have enough money left to indulge in the luxury of muckraking, after that.”

“Won’t the old man back him up?”

“Tells me that the boy is playing a lone hand,” said Pierce with satisfaction.

Herein he spoke the fact.  While the “Clarion’s” various campaigns were still in mid-career, Dr. Surtaine had made his final appeal to his son in vain, ringing one last change upon his Paean of Policy.

“What good does it all do you or anybody else?  You’re stirring up muck, and you’re getting the only thing you ever get by that kind of activity, a bad smell.”  He paused for his effect; then delivered himself of a characteristically vigorous and gross aphorism: 

“Boyee, you can’t sell a stink, in this town.”

“Perhaps I can help to get rid of it,” said Hal.

“Not you!  Nobody thanks you for your pains.  They take notice for a while, because their noses compel ’em to.  Then they forget.  What thanks does the public give a newspaper?  But the man you’ve roasted—­he’s after you, all the time.  A sore toe doesn’t forget.  Look at Pierce.”

“Pierce has bothered me,” confessed Hal.  “He’s shut me off from the banks.  None of them will loan the ‘Clarion’ a cent.  I have to go out of town for my money.”

“Can you blame him?  I’d have done the same if he’d roasted you as you roasted his girl.”