“Good-day, Mr. McCune,” was the answer. “Let me have your note of withdrawal before you leave town this afternoon.” The young man paused a moment, then extended his hand, as he said: “Shake hands, won't you? I--I haven't meant to be too hard on you. I hope things will seem easier and gayer to you before long; and if--if anything should turn up that I can do for you in a private way, I'll be very glad, you know. Good-by.” The sound of the “Herald's” victory went over the State. The paper came out regularly. The townsfolk bought it and the farmers drove in for it. Old subscribers came back. Old advertisers renewed. The “Herald” began to sell in Amo, and Gaines County people subscribed. Carlow folk held up their heads when journalism was mentioned. Presently the “Herald” announced a news connection with Rouen, and with that, and the aid of “patent insides,” began an era of three issues a week, appearing on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. The Plattville Brass Band serenaded the editor. During the second month of the new regime of the “Herald,” the working force of the paper received an addition. One night the editor found some barroom loafers tormenting a patriarchal old man who had a magnificent head and a grand white beard. He had been thrown out of a saloon, and he was drunk with the drunkenness of three weeks steady pouring. He propped himself against a wall and reproved his tormentors in Latin. “I'm walking your way, Mr. Fisbee,” remarked the journalist, hooking his arm into the old man's. “Suppose we leave our friends here and go home?” Mr. Fisbee was the one inhabitant of the town who had an unknown past; no one knew more about him than that he had been connected with a university somewhere, and had travelled in unheard-of countries before he came to Plattville. A glamour of romance was thrown about him by the gossips, to whom he ever proved a fund of delightful speculation. There was a dark, portentous secret in his life, it was agreed; an opinion not too well confirmed by the old man's appearance. His fine eyes had a pathetic habit of wandering to the horizon in a questioning fashion that had a queer sort of hopelessness in it, as if his quest were one for the Holy Grail, perhaps; and his expression was mild, vague, and sad. He had a look of race and blood; and yet, at the first glance, one saw that he was lost in dreams, and one guessed that the dreams would never be of great practicability in their application. Some such impression of Fisbee was probably what caused the editor of the “Herald” to nickname him (in his own mind) “The White Knight,” and to conceive a strong, if whimsical, fancy for him.