"If we served up those two stories together hot," emphasized Bat, "we'd about cut the throat of any opposition to our interests in the Valley? He'd quit! I'll bet before he'd see her involved, he'd jump his job!" When the Senator turned his face to the handy man, he was very sober. He stood looking over the tops of his glasses boring into Bat's face. "It's a pity," he said. "Yes, it's too bad: one hates to have one's faith in human nature all balled out this way; but you never know what kind of a fact you're going ping up against where a woman is concerned." Something in the Senator's look stopped Bat mid-way. "Brydges, I thought I told you never to meddle with the damphool who makes excuses for what he's going to do. Never do anything, unless you have some end worth while in view; then, if it's worth while, do it, damn it, and don't waste time excusing the means! Now, I'll have nothing to do with this; mind that, Brydges. You do it off your own responsibility. If MacDonald were one of our party, I wouldn't make use of it, if it were ten times over and over true. You'll have to be very careful how you use that, at all! It's effective. I don't deny it's very effective; but it's a pity! If you use that at all, you'll have to use it so it's not libelous." "Libelous?" burst out the handy man wakening up suddenly, scratching his tousled head and trying to make head or tail of orders that said 'do it' and 'don't do it' in one breath. "I can write it without a name so every man in the State will know who it is: give it as a joke; fetch in Calamity as the mother of the whole mess; the call of the blood, you know; reversion to type! They'll have to prove that the intent was malice before they can get a judgment. They'll have to come out with the truth before they can prove libel. It isn't libelous if it's done as a joke without malice." Moyese had flung himself down in his chair with a blow of his clenched fist on the desk, when the opening of the office door stopped the oath of disgust on his lips; and Eleanor MacDonald stood framed in the yellow light shining in from the hot street. For a moment, the transition from sun to shade blinded her. Then, she saw who was with the Senator. Brydges sprang up waiting to return her recognition. She made no sign. She walked over where he was standing. The Senator had half risen from his desk. Was it the spirit of the ancestral Indian in her eyes; or of the Man with the Iron Hand? Brydges' oily gloss went to tallow under her look. Moyese knew looks that drilled; and Brydges himself could bore behind for motives; but this look was not a drill: it was a Search Light; and the handy man--well, perhaps, it was the heat--the handy man suddenly wilted. "You can go, Brydges," ordered Moyese. "All right! See you again about that, Senator!" Brydges grabbed up the loose notes from the desk and bolted, banging the door behind him.