"Oh, the independent paper is floundering on the edge of failure. They'll have to swing in line with the side that pays them best at election time. One could buy up their debts now for a few thousand dollars, perhaps not twenty thousand. Another fifty or so would swing her off on an independent tack. There's been a great awakening. The people have their ears down to the ground for the coming change, Miss MacDonald; and the politicians don't know it! If we could swing her off well, she'd be a paying concern in a year; then the politicians could be d--I beg your pardon, the special interests could go to the Devil! That's what I wanted to talk about to Wayland. He's the winning horse! We haven't either of us got anything left to lose but some frayed convictions, and by God," (this time, he did not notice he had said it), "we'd invest 'em in an independent for all we're worth! I'm hot; and I've an idea Wayland isn't just at milk and water temperature; and the public isn't; and we'd have them! We'd force the other crowd to yell at the top of their voices for reform inside of six months. There's a lot about that Rim Rocks affair even the owners of the sheep don't know; but why in the Devil am I telling all this to a woman?" She had drawn her chair up to the table where he sat. "Because, I suppose, the woman wants to know. In case, you don't see Wayland, do you mind giving me the exact figures about that independent paper? We are all to go home together to-morrow. Let us put the figures down. I can tell him the rest when the others are not about; and do you know, I think I have heard him speak of some one who might back this kind of scheme?" Oh, crafty woman! Do you think the kindly eyes behind those strongly focussed glasses did not bore in behind your guarded words? Just once did she interrupt his quick run of explanations. "Is your idea to run an altogether _staid_ journal, or a yellow one?" she asked. He was plainly taken aback. He laid down his pencil. "If you were a man, I could explain that easier!" "Because, I'm done with the kind of goodness that's pickled and put away in a self-sealer where it won't spoil like old-fashioned jam for company," she said. The news editor's eyes opened very wide, indeed! She had said "_I'm done_" quite as unconsciously as he had let slip words inadmissable in polite converse. "It isn't piety done up in homoeopathic pills the world wants," she went on.