“My father doesn’t know that I’m here.”

“Oho!  So that’s it.  Knight-errantry, eh?  Now, let me put this thing to you straight, Mr. Harrington Surtaine.  If your father wants to make a fair and decent statement, without abuse or calling names, over his own signature, the ‘Clarion’ will run it, at fifty cents a word.”

“You dirty blackmailer!” said Hal slowly.

“Hard names go with this business, my young friend,” said the other coolly.

“At present you’ve got me checked.  But you don’t always keep your paid bully with you, I suppose.  One of these days you and I will meet—­”

“And you’ll land in jail.”

“He talks awfully young, doesn’t he?” said Mr. Ellis, shaking a solemn head.

“As for blackmail,” continued Sterne, a bit eagerly, “there’s nothing in that.  We’ve never asked Dr. Surtaine for a dollar.  He hasn’t got a thing on us.”  “You never asked him for advertising either, I suppose,” said Hal bitterly.

“Only in the way of business.  Just as we go out after any other advertising.”

“If he had given you his ads.—­”

“Oh, I don’t say that we’d have gone after him if he’d been one of our regular advertisers.  Every other paper in town gets his copy; why shouldn’t we?  We have to look out for ourselves.  We look out for our patrons, too.  Naturally, we aren’t going to knock one of our advertisers.  Others have got to take their chances.”

“And that’s modern journalism!”

“It’s the newspaper business,” cried Sterne.  “No different from any other business.”

“No wonder decent people consider newspaper men the scum of the earth,” said Hal, with rather ineffectual generalization.

“Don’t be young!” besought McGuire Ellis wearily.  “Pretend you’re a grown-up man, anyway.  You look as if you might have some sense about you somewhere, if you’d only give it a chance to filter through.”

Some not unpleasant quirk of speech and manner in the man worked upon Hal’s humor.

“Why, I believe you’re right about the youngness,” he admitted, with a smile.  “Perhaps there are other ways of getting at this thing.  Just for a test,—­for the last time will you or will you not, Mr. Sterne, publish this apology?”

“We will not.  There’s just one person can give me orders.”

“Who is that?”

“The owner.”

“I think you’ll be sorry.”

McGuire Ellis turned upon him a look that was a silent reproach to immaturity.

“Anything more?” queried Sterne.  “Nothing,” said Hal, with an effort at courtesy.  “Good-day to you both.”

“Well, what about it?” asked McGuire Ellis of his chief, as the visitor’s footsteps died away.

“Nothing about it.  When’ll the next Surtaine roast be ready?”

“Ought to be finished to-morrow.”

“Schedule it for Thursday.  We’ll make the old boy squeal yet.  Do you believe the boy when he says that his father didn’t send him?”