"On the contrary," said Smith. "I am taking what is technically known as a small rise out of you. You ask why I sold. It was a man with the price. Money," began Mr. Smith, "screams. The cash on my desk was this man's way of doing business, and a good deal it was. However, it'll net him six per cent year in and out, at that--a good rate in these lean times. I, of course, did better. I got--shall we say?--pickings. The past tense already, heigho! Well, it's been a most instructive life. My father taught me to write. He was esteemed a good editor, and he was, but at eighteen I was correcting his leaders for him. Hand Greeley a soft pencil and a pass at the encyclopedia, so he used to say, and he could prove anything under the sun. I am like that, except that--well, I don't believe I need the encyclopedia. It wasn't Greeley who made the remark, of course. It's a rule on the press to pin all journalistic anecdotes on Greeley. You sign the pledge when you go in. To be accounted strictly moral," continued Smith, "an editor must be blind in one eye and astigmatic in the other. Then he rings the bull's-eye of Virtue ten times out of ten, and the clergy bleats with delight. You can't find spiritual candor anywhere with a telescope, except in the criminal classes. There are no Pharisees there, God be praised! For my part, I see both sides of every question that was ever asked, and usually--don't you think?--both of them are right. I first adopt my point of view and subsequently prove it. Obviously, this is where the pickings come in. My grandfather started this paper on two hundred and fifty dollars, fifty dollars of which, I have heard, was his own. I could knock off for life as an idle member of the predatory classes, I suppose, but after all, I was made for an editor. In years past, I have, of course, had my offers from New York. Two of them were left open forever, and a little while ago, I telegraphed down and took the best. A grateful wire came in five minutes ahead of you. And that," he concluded wearily, in the flattest tones of a curiously flat voice, "is the life story of C. Smith, editor, up to the hour of going to press." Varney, who had never once been tempted to interrupt this strange apologia, struggled with an impulse to feel desperately sorry for Mr. Smith, and almost overcame it. "Smith," he said, in a moment, "why don't you tell me why you sold?" The editor got up and stared out of the window. Presently he turned, an odd faint flush tingeing his ordinarily colorless cheek. His air of smooth cynicism was gone, for once; and Varney saw then, as he had somehow suspected before, that the editor of the _Gazette_ wore polished bravado as a cloak and that underneath it he carried a rather troubled soul. "You are right," said Smith, "I--was twigging you again. Let us say," he added, looking at Varney with a kind of shamefaced defiance, "that a man gets tired of living on pickings after a while."