to twenty-five cents a line.  At that return his books would show a profit on a normal volume of advertising.  Meantime he performed an act of involuntary philanthropy with every increase of issue, Nevertheless, Hal felt for his mechanical giant something of the new-toy thrill.  To him it was a symbol of productive power.  It made appeal to his imagination, typifying the reborn “Clarion.”  He saw it as a master-loom weaving fresh patterns, day by day, into the fabric of the city’s life and thought.  That all might view the process, he had it mounted high from the basement, behind a broad plate-glass show window set in the front wall, a highly unstrategic position, as McGuire Ellis pointed out.

“Suppose,” said he, “a horse runs wild and makes a dive through that window?  Or a couple of bums get shooting at each other, and a stray bullet comes whiffling through the glass and catches young Mr. Press in his delikit insides.  We’re out of business for a week, maybe, mending him up.”

Shearson, however, was in favor of it.  It suggested prosperity and aroused public interest.  On Hal’s return from New York, the fat and melancholious advertising manager had exhibited a somewhat mollified pessimism.

“The Boston Store is coming back,” he visited Hal’s sanctum to announce.

“Why, that’s John M. Gibbs’s store, isn’t it?”

“Sure.”

“And he’s E.M.  Pierce’s brother-in-law.  I thought he’d stick by his family in fighting the ‘Clarion.’”

“Family is all right, but Grinder Gibbs is for business first and everything else afterwards.  Our rates look good to him, with the circulation we’re showing.  And he knows we bring results.  He’s been using us on the quiet for a little side issue of his own.”

“What’s that?”

“Some sewing-girls’ employment thing.  It’s in the ‘Classified’ department.  Don’t amount to much; but it’s proved to him that the ‘Clarion’ ad does the business.  I’ve been on his trail for two weeks.  So the store starts in Sunday with half-pages.  They say Pierce is crazy mad.”

“No wonder.”

“The best of it is that now the Retail Union won’t fight us, as a body, for taking up the Consumers’ League fight.  They can’t very well, with their second biggest store using the ‘Clarion’s’ columns.”

McGuire Ellis, too, was feeling quite cheerful over the matter.

“It shows that you can be independent and get away with it,” he declared, “if you get out an interesting enough paper.  By the way, that’s a hot little story ‘Kitty the Cutie’ turned in on the Breen girl’s suicide.”

“It was only attempted suicide, wasn’t it?”

“The first time.  She had a second trial at it day before yesterday and turned the trick.  You’ll find Neal’s copy on your desk.  I held it for you.”

From out of a waiting heap of mail, proof, and manuscript, Hal selected the sheets covered with Milly Neal’s neat business chirography.  She had written her account briefly and with restraint, building her “story” around the girl’s letter.  It set forth the tragedy of a petty swindle.