“You’re anxious to go?”

“I’m going,” said Pink, cheerfully.

“Then I’d better go along and look after you.  But I tell you how I see it.  After I’ve done that I’ll go as far as you like.  Either there is nothing to it and we’re fools for our pains, or there’s a lot to it, and in that case we are a pair of double-distilled lunatics to go there alone.”

Pink laughed joyously.

Life had been very dull for him since his return from France.  He had done considerable suffering and more thinking than was usual with him, but he had had no action.  But behind his boyish zest there was something more, something he hid as he did the fact that he sometimes said his prayers; a deep and holy thing, that always gave him a lump in his throat at Retreat, when the flag came slowly down and the long lines of men stood at attention.  Something he was half ashamed and half proud of, love of his country.

* * * * *

At the same time another conversation was going on in the rear room of a small printing shop in the heart of the city.  It went on to the accompaniment of the rhythmic throb of the presses, and while two printers, in their shirt sleeves, kept guard both at the front and rear entrances.

Doyle sat with his back to the light, and seated across from him, smoking a cheap cigar, was the storekeeper from Friendship, Cusick.  In a corner on the table, scowling, sat Louis Akers.

“I don’t know why you’re so damned suspicious, Jim,” he was saying.  “Cusick says the stall about the Federal agents went all right.”

“Like a house a-fire,” said Cusick, complacently.

“I think, Akers,” Doyle observed, eyeing his subordinate, “that you are letting your desire to get this Cameron fellow run away with your judgment.  If we get him and Denslow, there are a hundred ready to take their places.”

“Cameron is the brains of the outfit,” Akers said sulkily.

“How do you know Cameron will go?”

Akers rose lazily and stretched himself.

“I’ve got a hunch.  That’s all.”

A girl came in from the composing room, a bundle of proofs in her hand.  With one hand Akers took the sheets from her; with the other he settled his tie.  He smiled down at her.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

Ellen was greatly disturbed.  At three o’clock that afternoon she found Edith and announced her intention of going out.

“I guess you can get the supper for once,” she said ungraciously.

Edith looked up at her with wistful eyes.

“I wish you didn’t hate me so, Ellen.”

“I don’t hate you.”  Ellen was slightly mollified.  “But when I see you trying to put your burdens on other people—­”

Edith got up then and rather timidly put her arms around Ellen’s neck.

“I love him so, Ellen,” she whispered, “and I’ll try so hard to make him happy.”