"Yes, through the fog," said Lyman, holding out his hand. Caruthers grasped it, dropped it, as if he too felt that it came through a fog, and hastened out. Just outside he met Warren coming in. "What's he looking so serious about?" the editor asked. "Sit down," said Lyman. "Don't take the chair he had--the other one, that's it. Well, we have split the law trust and he goes across the square to open a new office." "Is that so? Well, I reckon there's a good deal of the wolf about him. Yes, sir, he has seen me bleeding under the heel of the Express Company, without so much as giving me the----" "Moist eye of sympathy," Lyman suggested. "That's all right, and it fits. Say, you are more of a writer than a lawyer. And that's exactly in line with what I came in to tell you. I got a half column ad. this morning from a patent medicine concern in the North, and they want an additional write-up. It all comes through your sketches." "Do you think so?" "I know it. A drummer told me this morning that he had heard some fellows talking about my paper in a St. Louis hotel, the best hotel in the town, mind you--and I can see from the exchanges that the _Sentinel_ is making tracks away out yonder in the big road. And it's all owing to that quaint Yankee brain of yours, Lyman. Yes, it is. Why, the best lawyers in this town have written for my paper. The Circuit Judge reviewed the life of Sir Edmond Saunders, whoever he was, and Capt. Fitch, the prosecuting attorney, wrote two columns on Napoleon, to say nothing of the hundreds of things sent in by the bar in general, and it all amounted to nothing, but you come along in the simplest sort of a way and make a hit." "I'm glad you think so." "Oh, it's not a question of think; I know it. And now I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll let this law end of the building take care of itself and we'll give our active energies to the paper. You do the editing and I'll do the business. You put stuff into the columns and I'll wrestle with the express agent. And I'll divide with you." "Warren," said Lyman, getting up and putting his hands on the newspaper man's shoulders, "there's no fog between you and me." Warren looked up with a smile. He was a young fellow with a bright face, and the soft curly hair of a child. "Fog? No, sunshine. There couldn't be any fog where you are, Lyman. I'm not much of a scholar. I've had to squirm so much that I haven't had time to study, but I know a man when I see him, and I don't see how any woman could give you much attention without falling in love with you, hanged if I do." Lyman blushed and shook him playfully. "I am delighted to pool distresses with you," he said, "but don't try to flatter me. Women laugh at me," he added, sitting down. "No, they laugh with you. But that's all right. Now, let's talk over our prospects." CHAPTER V. THE BELLE OF THE TOWN.