"No; you shall come in on the ground floor this time; though I may ask you to hold your hand until I have used my leverage. And if you'll go into it to stay, you sha'n't be alone. Giving the _Argus_ precedence in any item of news, I'll engage to have every other opposition editor in the State ready to back you." "Gad! you're growing, Kent. Do you mean to down the Bucks crowd ded-definitely?" demanded the editor, who stammered a little under excitable provocation. "Bigger men than you have tried it--and failed." "But no one of them with half my obstinacy, Hildreth. It can be done, and I am going to do it." The night editor laughed again. "If you can show that gang up, Kent, nothing in this State will be too good for you." "I've got it to do," said Kent. "Afterward, perhaps I'll come around for some of the good things. I am not in this for health or pleasure. Can I count on you after the mud-slinging begins?" Hildreth reflected further, disregarding the foreman's reproachful calls for copy. "I'll go you," he said at last; "and I'll undertake to swing the chief into line. But I am going to disagree with you flat on the project of a sudden exposé. Right or wrong, Bucks has pup-popular sentiment on his side. Take the Trans-Western territory, for example: at the present speaking these grafters--or their man Guilford; it's all the same--own those people down there body and soul. You couldn't pry Bucks out of their affections with a crowbar--suddenly, I mean. We'll have to work up to it gradually; educate the people as we go along." "I concede that much," said Kent. "And you may as well begin on this same Trans-Western deal,"--wherewith he pieced together the inferences which pointed to the stock-smashing project behind the receivership. "Don't use too much of it," he added, in conclusion. "It is all inference and deduction as yet, as I say. But you will admit it's plausible." The editor was sitting far back in his chair again, chewing absently on the extinct cigar. "Kent, did you fuf-figure all that out by yourself?" "No," said Kent, briefly. "There is a keener mind than mine behind it--and behind this oil field business, as well." "I'd like to give that mind a stunt on the _Argus_," said the editor. "But about the Belmount mix-up: you will give us a stickful now and then as we go along, if you unearth anything that the public would like to read?" "Certainly; any and everything that won't tend to interfere with my little intermediate scheme. As I have intimated, I must bring Bucks to terms on my own account before I turn him over to you and the people of the State. But I mean to be in on that, too." Hildreth wagged his head dubiously. "I may be overcautious; and I don't want to seem to scare you out, Kent. You ought to know your man better than I do--better than any of us; but if I had your job, I believe I should want to travel with a body-guard. I do, for a fact."