“Great Caesar!” said Hal again, rather weakly.

“Does that square accounts between us?”

“More!  A hundred times more!  That’s the biggest indorsement any paper in this town ever had.  Old Home Week’s safe.  Did you tell Mac?”

“Yes.  He’s up there cursing now because they won’t let him go to the office to plan out the article.”

To the “Clarion,” the presidential encomium was a tremendous boom professionally.  Financially, however, it was of no immediate avail.  It did not bring local advertising, and advertising was what the paper sorely needed.  Still, it did call attention to the paper from outside.  A few good contracts for “foreign” advertising, a department which had fallen off to almost nothing when Hal discarded all medical “copy,” came in.  With these, and a reasonable increase in local support which could be counted upon, now that commercial bitterness against the paper was somewhat mollified, Hal reckoned that he could pull through—­if it were not for the Pierce suits.  There was the crux of the situation.  Nothing was being done about them.  They had been postponed more than once, on motion of Pierce’s counsel.  Now they hung over Hal’s head in a suspense fast becoming unbearable.  At length he decided that, in fairness to his staff, he should warn them of the situation.

He chose, for the explanation, one of the Talk-It-Over Breakfasts, the first one which McGuire Ellis, released temporarily from the hospital for the occasion, had attended since his wound.  He sat at Hal’s right, still pale and thin, but with his look of bulldog obstinacy undiminished; enhanced, rather, by the fact that one ear had been sharpened to a canine pointedness by the missile which had so narrowly grazed his life.  Ellis had been goaded to a pitch of high exasperation by the solicitude and attentions of his fellows.  It was his emphatically expressed opinion that the whole gathering lay under a blight of superlative youthfulness.  In his mind he exempted Hal, over whose silence and distraction he was secretly worried.  The cause was explained when the chairman rose to close the meeting.

“There is something I have to say,” he said.  “I’ve put it off longer than I should.  I may have to give up the ‘Clarion.’  It depends upon the outcome of the libel suits brought by E.M.  Pierce.  If, as we fear, Miss Cleary, the nurse who was run over, testifies for the prosecution, we can’t win.  Then it’s only a question of the size of the damages.  A big verdict would mean the ruin of the paper, I’m telling you this so that you may have time to look for new jobs.”

There was a long silence.  Then a melancholy, musing voice said:  “Gee!  That’s tough!  Just as the paper pulled off the Home Week stunt, too.”

“How much of a verdict would bust us?” asked another.

“Twenty-five thousand dollars,” said Hal, “together with lawyers’ fees.  I couldn’t go on.”

“Say, I know that old hen of a nurse,” said one of the sporting writers, with entire seriousness.  “Wonder if it’d do any good to marry her?”