“I mean just this: You are the most conscienceless, inhuman brute I ever met; but I have a sort of morbid liking for you. Besides, as you so often take graceful occasion to remind me, I am in your debt for certain financial favors. Also, I have some regard for the truth of what appears in my own newspaper. For all those reasons--and for several more--I’m not going to help you to commit social suicide, nor to stamp yourself as more of a highwayman than you really are. Is that plain?” “So plain that it’s plumb ugly,” replied Caleb, “But you’ll do it just the same. If it ain’t the _Star_, it’ll be one of the other papers. That story’s goin’ to be in print by to-morrow mornin’. You speak ’bout likin’ me an’ bein’ in my debt. The best way you can show that likin’ an’ gratitood is by doin’ as I ask now. The _Star’s_ the best paper in Granite an’ it’s read by the best people. Don’t you s’pose I’d rather have folks get their first idee of the story from such a paper as that than to have ’em see it plastered all over the front page of some screechin’ sheet, in letters two feet high?” “But,” argued Caine, “What sense is there in doing it at all?” “From a grown man’s point of view,” admitted Caleb, “There ain’t a mite of sense in it. It’s straight craziness. But if you think I’m goin’ to let Dey go around knowin’ the trooth about her old crook of a father who she worships, you’re wrong. She thinks he was a measly saint with a tin halo. An’ she gets pleasure out of thinkin’ it. An’ she’s goin’ to go right on thinkin’ it to the end of the game. What sort of a yellow dog would _I_ be to let her hear things about him that’d make her cry an’ that would sure break her heart? There’s another thing: She’s got into a good crowd now. She goes to folks’ houses an’ has a good time there. Who’s goin’ to invite a crook’s daughter to their house? Or, do you think she’d go to such places, knowin’ how they thought of her father? Not her. She’d die first. Why, ev’ry time folks looked at her in the street, she’d be thinkin’ to herself: ‘It ain’t because I’m so pretty an’ ’cause my eyes look like two chunks of heaven, an’ ’cause when I smile at you it makes you feel as if someone had lent you money.’ She’d think: ‘They’re pointin’ me out as the daughter of Shevlin who stole cash from the city!’ No, no, son! She ain’t goin’ to have none of those things happen to her. Not while Caleb Conover’s on deck. Butterfly smashin’ ain’t in my line. That’s why I say you’ve got to help me. An’ you’ll do it, too.” “Of course you know,” suggested Caine, “that this will ruin those weird social ambitions of yours?”