He stopped at the fence and leaned against it, gazing for the last time at the tent, glimmering white, like a misshapen ghost, among the somber trees. He had no energy left to climb over.

"Well, I'm a chimpanzee," he muttered to himself at last. "The highest bidder can have me, with no upset price. d.i.c.k Yates, I wouldn't have believed it of you. _You_ a newspaper man? _You_ a reporter from 'way back? _You_ up to snuff? Yates, I'm ashamed to be seen in your company!

Go back to New York, and let the youngest reporter in from a country newspaper scoop the daylight out of you. To think that this thing has been going on right under your well-developed nose, and you never saw it--worse, never had the faintest suspicion of it; that it was thrust at you twenty times a day--nearly got your stupid head smashed on account of it; yet you bleated away like the innocent little lamb that you are, and never even suspected! d.i.c.k, you're a three-sheet-poster fool in colored ink. And to think that both of them know all about the first proposal! _Both_ of them! Well, thank Heaven, Toronto is a long way from New York."

THE END.