"Why?" Luke was amazed. "Because I want to protect the public." "Then you’d better go to the M. & N. railroad." "But you know they wouldn’t do anything. They’ve promised before." "I can’t believe that," said the editor. "I know it," said Luke. "I can’t believe it. You have always been too sudden, Mr. Huber—if you’ll pardon my saying so. At any rate, we can’t print these things." He returned the letters. "After all, the man’s dead, you know." "What’s that got to do with it?" Luke’s voice rose in reply to the hated phrase. "I want to keep some other people from dying." The editor picked up a proof-sheet and began to read it. "It would be bad taste for us to print that, just now," he said. "Come around in a couple of weeks, and we may think about it. Why, the body’s hardly cold yet." §5. As Forbes had once gone from bank to bank, Luke went that morning from newspaper-office to newspaper-office. Yet there was this difference: that, whereas Forbes had only tried a few banks, Luke tried a dozen newspaper-offices. His search included the papers notoriously controlled by the money or the advertising of the power that opposed him; he even tried some of those journals of the city which are printed in foreign tongues, and he tried the radical press. He tried all in vain. Most of the editors were men that had fought him when he was the candidate of the Municipal Reform League; some that he sought were of those who had tired of him when he pestered them with explanations of his political overthrow. Many refused to see him; one or two pronounced him mad. The radicals shared the view of the man with whom he first spoke: they would not be guilty of bad taste. Wherever he got word with a person in authority, the word was the same; he met with that all-sufficient argument: "After all, the man’s dead." §6. When, finally, he acknowledged defeat, his wearied nerves manifested their condition through deep physical exhaustion. He could not front the thought of passing the remainder of the day at the factory; could not go at once from one losing fight to another. However much he might be needed, he could not do it. Until he had rested, he would be useless, and worse than useless. He did not go back to the Arapahoe. Instead, with the open country calling him, he went to the Grand Central Station and took a train into Connecticut. The day was Saturday, and the cars were filled with released workers, but Luke avoided them by going far and descending at the least important of the train’s stops. Tired though he was, he walked beyond the little town. He cut across fields to a hill crowned by a clump of trees and there, in the shade, threw himself on the ground and lay for hours thinking of nothing and looking at white clouds sailing across a blue sky. He wished that he could lie here forever....