Ned, in an agony of remorse and anxiety, clung to the case, almost overpowered by the realization how evil a thing concealment is, and what ruin it had wrought here. The incendiaries, he reflected, had doubtless made their escape in this long interval. He and his fears and his groundless reasoning were responsible for that,--for more!--for the blasting of an honest man's character and the wreck of his fortune, for the insurance companies would pay naught! It seemed a grotesque libel on likelihood, but the manager might even be arrested, tried, and serve a long term in the penitentiary, charged with burning his own house to defraud the insurance companies, because of the wickedness of a gang of knaves and a foolish boy's folly. Ned grew more and more alarmed as he read again and again those strong logical statements that would forever blast the man who had befriended him at his utmost need, for the paper was a power in the land, and the editor's word weighed with all sorts of people. Ned might now have confessed all,--he thought of this once. The habit of concealment, however, does not give way readily. It yields only after the exhaustion of its uttermost resources. He asked himself who would now believe him? He was already accounted a mere tool and accomplice, and his puny efforts to whitewash such smirches as those intricate blots and tangles of loop-letters had put upon the manager's name would be ludicrously futile. He felt that he could measure the incredulity of the public. He could measure, too, its credulity, alack, when all the town would read to-morrow the editor's reply! The town never read it! In a paroxysm of rage and fear Ned suddenly clutched the sheet and thrust it into the gas-jet. The blaze leaped up. Distinct shadows started forth from the murky glooms. The motion alarmed him. He glanced fearfully over his shoulder. He was still quaking at his own deed when the "copy" fell, a cinder. But perhaps his purpose was not yet served, he argued, for the article might have been set up. He looked at the imposing stone. The type was all ready, and in the chase,--the proof had been taken,--the revised smirched sheets lay hard by, all bearing the cabalistic sign O.K., the fiat of the press reader. "They won't look at it again before the form is locked and goes to press," Ned said tremulously, for an audacious new idea had flashed into his mind. The article had compactly filled one third of a column. He swept the types of this space from the stone and replaced them at random in the boxes. Then selecting a larger variety, he began some of the fastest type-setting ever done in that composing-room. For copy he had gotten hold of a new prospectus of the paper, which was still in manuscript. Judiciously leaded he thought it might fill the blank space, and this substitute for the article which he had done away with he judged was innocent enough. He worked on hard and desperately,--he did not know how long.