In the meantime they were entering O----, the station of which now appeared. By now, somehow, Collins had not only convinced the officers, but the prisoner himself. Binns could even see the rural love of show and parade a-gleam in their eyes, their respect for the _News_, the larger paper, as opposed to the _Star_. The _Star_ might be all right, but plainly the _News_ was the great place in the sight of these rurals for such an exhibition as this. What a pity, he thought, that he had ever left the _News_! As he arose with the others to leave the train he said dully, “No, I won’t come in on this. It’s all right if you want to bring him down to the _Star_, or you can take him to police headquarters. But I’m not going to let you do this. You hear now, don’t you?” But outside, Collins laying hold of his arm in an amazingly genial fashion, seemed to come nearer to him humanly than he had ever dreamed was possible before. “You come up with me to the _News_ now,” Collins kept saying, “and then I’ll go down with you to the _Star_, see? We’ll just let Hill or Weaver take one picture, and then we’ll go down to your place--you see?” Although Mr. Binns did not see, he went. For the time, nothing seemed important. If Collins had stayed by him he could possibly have prevented his writing any story at all. Even as Binns dreamed, Collins hailed a carriage, and the six of them crowded into it and were forthwith whirled away to the door of the _News_ where, once they had reached it and Collins, the detectives, and the bandit began hurrying across the sidewalk to that familiar door which once had meant so much to him, Binns suddenly awoke. What was it--the door? Or the temporary distraction of Collins? At any rate, he awoke now and made a frantic effort to retrieve himself. “Wait!” he called. “Say, hold on! Stop! I won’t do this at all. I don’t agree to this!” but now it was too late. In a trice the prisoner, officers, Collins and even himself were up the two or three low steps of the main entrance and into the hall, and then seeing the hopelessness of it he paused as they entered the elevator and was left to meditate on the inexplicability of the thing that had been done to him. What was it? How had this low brute succeeded in doing this to him? By the Lord, he had succeeded in hypnotizing him, or something very much like it. What had become, then, of his superior brain, his intellectual force, in the face of this gross savage desire on the part of Collins to win? It was unbelievable. Collins had beaten him, and that in a field and at a task at which he deemed himself unusually superior.