“I don’t the very least bit in the world understand what you are saying.”

The news editor laughed and laid his hat on the onyx centre table beneath the electric lights.

“Why, we’re both fired,” he said.

“Fired?” repeated Eleanor.

This time he laughed aloud:  “I don’t mean fired out of a gun,” he explained.  “We’re fired out of our job.  I knew after the inquest, I’d get the sack,” he went on, making light of it, “but the wire didn’t come till this morning.”

There were a lot of things the news editor didn’t tell Eleanor just here; and I beg of you, dear reader, to remember these things when you execrate the press; for they happen every day to plain fellows, some of them profane fellows, who make no professions and blow no trumpet.  When the news editor walked out of the office that morning, he owned, besides the Smelter City lots, which were mortgaged to the hilt, and six “kiddies,” who had to be fed, precisely the five dollar bill in his pocket, the clothes on his back and the duster coat that he carried out on his arm.  It was a mere detail, of course; but it was one of the details he didn’t tell Eleanor.  When he had gone home and told his wife, she had asked, “For Heaven’s sake, Joe, what ever will we do, run a fruit stand; or peddle milk?” Joe had answered the distracted question with a lighter hearted laugh than she had heard for many a day.  Then he had gone off to catch Wayland.

But Eleanor did not know all this.  Her quick wit grasped one salient fact.  You think, perhaps, it was that Wayland had been dismissed?  It wasn’t.

“You mean that you have lost your position because of the evidence you gave for us?”

Then the news editor did what he always told his underlings not to do and to do—­“Never lie; but if you have to, lie like a gentleman.”

“Not at all, Miss MacDonald!  I got fired because I told the truth!  If I had given evidence that was simply in your favor, I’d deserve to be fired; but it was only a matter of somebody letting in a little honest daylight.  I told Wayland at the time that I’d cooked my dough!  Funny enough, the wire that came firing me this morning was immediately followed by a wire from Washington announcing that he has been dismissed for taking three weeks’ absence without leave.  We got it in the neck together, Miss MacDonald, and I thought maybe Wayland would be game enough to have a—­a—­a shake with me over it.”

“Yes, a shake,” smiled Eleanor.  “I’d like to mix it for you!”

The news editor suddenly lost all shyness, burst out laughing, leaned forward and shook hands.

“Don’t know whether you know it or not,” he went on, “but about a month ago one of those d—­I beg your pardon, Miss MacDonald, Down-East scribblerettes, that come out to see the West from a Pullman car window and put things right, passed through here.  Somebody got him and filled him up pretty full with a lot of lies about Wayland—­”