But it was worse. The other had been, after all, no more than an incident. This, now, was an overpowering fact. The town didn't have to notice the other. And despite the gossiping instinct, your small community is rather glad to edge away from unpleasant surmises that are not established facts. Facts are so uncompromising. And so disrupting. And sometimes upsetting to standardised thought. 'That's it,' thought Humphrey--he was reduced to thought Henry was striding on in white silence--'it's a fact. They can't evade it. Only thing they can do, if they're to keep comfortable about their dam' town, is to kill everybody connected with the mess. Have to revise party and dinner lists. And it'll raise Ned with the golf tournament. They'll resent all that. And they'll have to show outsiders that the thing is an amazing exception. Nothing else going on like it. They'll have to show that.' 3 The next morning Henry--stiff, distrait, his eyes wandering a little now and then and his sensitive mouth twitching nervously--breakfasted with Humphrey at Stanley's. People--some people--spoke to him. But he winced at every greeting. Humphrey watched him narrowly. He was ablaze with self-consciousness. But he held his head up pretty well. He was all shut up within himself. Since their talk of the evening he hadn't mentioned the subject. It was clear that he couldn't mention it. He spoke of curiously irrelevant things. The style of Robert Louis Stevenson, for one. During the walk from the rooms to Stanley's. And then he brought up Bob McGibbon's theory that even with a country weekly, if you made your paper interesting enough you would get readers and the readers would bring the advertising He asked if Humphrey thought it would work out. 'It's important to me, you know, Hump. I've got a cool thousand up on the _Gleaner_. It's like betting on Bob McGibbon's idea to win.' His voice trembled a little. There were volcanoes of feeling stirring within the boy. He would erupt of course, sooner or later. Humphrey found the experience moving to the point of pain. When he entered the _Gleaner_ office, Bob McGibbon, looking up at him anxiously, said good-morning, then pursed his lips in thought. He found occasion to say, later:-- 'Henry, how are you taking this thing?' Henry swallowed, glanced out of the window, then threw out one hand with an expressive gesture and raised his eyes. 'Oh,' he said, 'all right. I--it's not true, Bob. Not about me.' 'That's just what I tell 'em,' said McGibbon eagerly. 'What you going to do? Go right on?' 'Well--why, yes! I can't run away.'