There was not a trace of the "Hast thou found me?" in the editor's voice or his manner. If he expected assassination, he did not appear to mind. He sat on without turning, staring apathetically out of the window, just as he had done when he watched Varney cross and come in at his door. "I have come," said Varney, "because I understand that you are the sole owner, as well as the editor, of this paper. Am I right?" Smith lit a fresh cigarette, flipped the old one out of the window and paused to watch the boys outside fight for it. Half-smoked stubs came frequently out of that window when Mr. Smith sat there and many boys in Hunston knew it. "Assuming that you are?" queried he. "Assuming that," said Varney, "I'll say that I have come to buy this paper. And to discharge you from the editorship." Smith drew in his feet, and swung slowly around. The two men measured each other in an interval of intelligent silence. On the whole, upon this close view, Varney found it harder to think of Smith as a contemptible cur who circulated lying slanders for profit than as the young man who wrote the famous editorials. "And still they come," said Smith, enigmatically. "Three of them in one day--well, well!" And he added musingly: "So I have stung you as hard as that, have I?" "Let us say rather," said Varney, whose present tack was diplomacy, "that I have some loose money which I want to stow away in a paying little enterprise." "I am the last man in the world to boast of a kindness," continued Smith, in his faintly mocking manner, "but I gave you fair warning to leave town." "Instead I stayed. And an exceedingly interesting town I have found it. Something doing every minute. But, as I just remarked, I have looked in to buy your paper." "If I were like some I know," meditated Smith, "I'd be thinking: 'The Lord has delivered him into my hand, aye, delivered dear old Beany.' I'd embarrass you with questions, make you blush with catechisms. But I am a merciful man, and observe that I ask you nothing. You want to buy the _Gazette_ for an investment. Let it stand at that. So you're the money-grubbing sort that supposes that everything on God's hassock has its price?" "I believe it's street knowledge that the _Gazette_ has its. But I called really not so much to discuss ethics, as to ascertain your figure." Smith gave a sigh which was not without its trace of mockery. "'Fortunately, I am hardened to insults. Editors are expected to stand anything. Times are dull--nothing much to do--drop around and kick the editor. You've no idea what we have to put up with from spring poets alone. Rejoice, B----, that is, Mr.--er--Blank, that the _Gazette_ is never to be yours." "You can't mean that you decline to sell?" "When I implied to you just now that I was sole owner of the _Gazette_, I was, of course, speaking rather reminiscently than in the strict light of present facts." "What do you mean by that?"