“Mr. Surtaine,” said he, chewing his cigar with some violence, “you and me ain’t got much in common.  You think I’m a grafter, and I think you’re a lily-finger.  But I came to thank you just the same for helping us out over there.”

“Glad to help you out when I can,” said Hal, with his disarming smile:  “or to fight you when I have to.”

“Shake,” said the heeler.  “I guess we’ll average down into pretty good enemies.  Lemme know whenever I can do you a turn.”

Then there was the electric light fight.  Since the memory of man Worthington had paid the most exorbitant gas rate in the State.  The “Clarion” set out to inquire why.  So insistent was its thirst for information that the “Banner” and the “Telegram” took up the cudgels for the public-spirited corporation which paid ten per cent dividends by overcharging the local public.  Thereupon the “Clarion” pointed out that the president of the gas company was the second largest stockholder in the “Telegram,” and that the local editorial writer of the “Banner” derived, for some unexplained reason, a small but steady income in the form of salary, from the gas company.  This exposure was regarded as distinctly “not clubby” by the newspaper fraternity in general:  but the public rather enjoyed it, and made such a fuss over it that a legislative investigation was ordered.  Meantime, by one of those curious by-products of the journalistic output, the local university preserved to itself the services of its popular professor of political economy, who was about to be discharged for lese majeste, in that he had held up as an unsavory instance of corporate control, the Worthington Gas Company, several of whose considerable stockholders were members of the institution’s board of trustees.  The “Clarion” made loud and lamentable noises about this, and the board reconsidered hastily.  Louder and much more lamentable were the noises made by the president of the university, the Reverend Dr. Knight, a little brother of one of the richest and greatest of the national corporations, in denunciation of the “Clarion”:  so much so, indeed, that they were published abroad, thereby giving the paper much extensive free advertising.

Pleasant memories, these, to Hal.  Not always pleasant, perhaps, but at least vividly interesting, the widely varying types with whom his profession had brought him into contact:  McGuire Ellis, “Tip” O’Farrell, the Reverend Norman Hale, Dr. Merritt, Elias M.—­

The mechanism of thought checked with a wrench.  Pierce had it in his power to put an end to all this.  He must purchase the right to continue, and at Pierce’s own price.  But was the price so severe?  After all, he could contrive to do much; to carry on many of his causes; to help build up a better and cleaner Worthington; to preserve a moiety of his power, at the sacrifice of part of his independence; and at the same time his paper would make money, be successful, take its place among the recognized business enterprises of the town.  As for the Rookeries epidemic upon which all this turned, what did he really know of it, anyway?  Very likely it had been exaggerated.  Probably it would die out of itself.  If lives were endangered, that was the common chance of a slum.