“Every paper’d be glad to take my stuff, too.  Why, Streaky Mountain copy is the Holy Bible compared to what you’ve got here.  Take a slant at this:  ’Consumption Cured in Three Months.’—­’Cancer Cured or your Money Back.’—­Catarrh dopes, headache cures, germ-killers, baby-soothers, nerve-builders,—­the whole stinkin’ lot.  Don’t I know ’em!  Either sugar pills that couldn’t cure a belly-ache, or hell’s-brew of morphine and booze.  Certina ain’t the worst of ’em, any more than it’s the best.  I may squeeze a few dollars out of easy boobs, but you, Andy Certain, you and your young whelp here, you’re playin’ the poor suckers for their lives.  And then you’re too lily-fingered to touch a mining proposition because there’s a gamble in it!”

He crumpled the paper in his sinewy hands, hurled it to the floor, kicked it high over Dr. Surtaine’s head, and stalking across to Hal’s desk, slapped down his proofs on it with a violence that jarred the whole structure.

“You run that,” he snarled, “or I’ll hire the biggest hall in Worthington and tell the whole town what I’ve just been telling you.”

His face, furrowed and threatening, was thrust down close to Hal’s.  Thus lowered, the eyes came level with a strip of print, pasted across the inner angle of the desk.

“‘Whose Bread I Eat, his Song I Sing,’” he read.  “What’s that?”

“A motto,” said McGuire Ellis.  “The complete guide to correct journalistic conduct.  Put there, lest we forget.”

“H’m!” said McQuiggan, puzzled.  “It’s in the right place, all right, all right.  Well, does my ad. go?”

“No,” said Hal.  “But I’m much obliged to you, McQuiggan.”

“You go to hell.  What’re you obliged to me for?” said the visitor suspiciously.

“For the truth.  I think you’ve told it to me.  Anyway you’ve made me tell it to myself.”

“I guess I ain’t told you much you don’t know about your snide business.”

“You have, though.  Go ahead and hire your hall.  But—­take a look at to-morrow’s ‘Clarion’ before you make your speech.  Now, good-day to you.”

McQuiggan, wondering and a little subdued by a certain quiet resolution in Hal’s speech, went, beckoning Ellis after him for explication.  Hal turned to his father.

“I don’t suppose,” he began haltingly, “that you could have told me all this yourself.”

“What?” asked Dr. Surtaine, consciously on the defensive.

“About the medical ads.”

“McQuiggan’s a sore-head”—­began the Doctor.

“But you might have told me about Certina, as I’ve been living on Certina money.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”  All the self-assurance had gone out of the quack’s voice.

“Father, does Certina cure Bright’s disease?”

“Cure?  Why, Boyee, what is a cure?”

“Does it cure it?” insisted Hal.

“Sit down and cool off.  You’ve let that skunk, McQuiggan, get you all excited.”