"None of your concerts for me," he said brusquely. "It would interfere too seriously with my own musical job of getting in tune with the infinite."

"Mornin', Mr. Opp," said Mrs. Gusty from the dining-room window. "There ain't many editors has time to stand around and talk this time of day."

"Just paused a moment in pa.s.sing," said Mr. Opp. "Wanted to see if I couldn't induce our young friend here to give us a' article for 'The Opp Eagle.' Any nature, you know; we are always metropolitan in our taste.

Thought maybe he'd tell us some of his first impressions of our city."

Hinton smiled and shook his head. "You'd better not stir up my impressions about anything these days; I am apt to splash mud."

"We can stand it," said Mr. Opp, affably. "If Cove City needs criticism and rebuke, 'The Opp Eagle' is the vehicle to administer it. You dictate a few remarks to my reporter, and I'll feature it on the front editorial column."

Hinton's eyes twinkled wickedly behind his blue gla.s.ses. "I'll give you an article," he said, "but no name is to be signed."

Mr. Opp, regretting the stipulation, but pleased with the promise, was turning to depart when Mrs. Gusty appeared once more at the window.

"What's the matter with the oil-wells?" she demanded, as she dusted off the sill. "Why don't they open up? You can't use bad weather for an excuse any longer."

"It wasn't the weather," said Mr. Opp, with the confident and superior manner of one who is conversant with the entire situation. "This here delay has been arranged with a purpose. I and Mr. Mathews has a plan that will eventually yield every stock-holder in the Cove six to one for what he put into it."

"Intend selling out to a syndicate?" asked Hinton.

Mr. Opp looked at him in surprise.

"Well, yes; I don't mind telling you two, but it mustn't go any farther.

The oil prospects in this region are of such a great magnitude that we can't command sufficient capital to do 'em justice. I and Mr. Mathews are at present negotiating with several large concerns with a view to selling out the entire business at a large profit. You can't have any conception of the tac' and patience it takes to manage one of these large deals."

"Who was that man Clark that was down here last week?" asked Mrs. Gusty, impressed, in spite of herself, at being taken into the confidence of such a man of affairs.

Mr. Opp's face clouded. "Now that was a very unfortunate thing about Clark. He was sent down by the Union Syndicate of New York city to make a report on the region, and he didn't get the correct ideas in the case at all. If they hadn't sent such a poor man, the whole affair might have been settled by now."

"Wasn't his report favorable?" asked Hinton.

"He hasn't made it yet," said Mr. Opp; "but he let drop sundry casual remarks to me that showed he wasn't a man of fine judgment at all. I went over the ground with him, and pointed out some of the places where we calculated on drilling; but he was so busy making measurements and taking notes that he didn't half hear what I was saying."

"He stayed at Our Hotel," said Mrs. Gusty. "Mr. Tucker said he had as mean a face as ever he looked into."

"Who said so?" asked Hinton.

She tossed her head and flipped her duster at him, but it was evident that she was not displeased.

"By the way, Mr. Opp," she said, "I'm thinking about letting Guin-never come home week after next. Guess you ain't sorry to hear that."

On the contrary, Mr. Opp was overcome with joy. Letters were becoming less and less satisfying, and the problem suggested by Mrs. Gusty was still waiting solution.

"If you'll just mention the date," he said, trying to keep his countenance from expressing an undue amount of rapture, "I'll make a business trip down to Coreyville on purpose to accompany her back home."

But Mrs. Gusty declined to be explicit. She deemed it unwise to allow a mere man to know as much as she did upon any given subject.

Hinton's editorial appeared in the next issue of "The Opp Eagle." It was a clever and cutting satire on the impressions of a foreigner visiting America for the first time. Hinton interviewed himself concerning his impressions of the Cove. He approached the subject with great seriousness, handling village trifles as if they were munic.i.p.al cannon-b.a.l.l.s. He juggled with sense and nonsense, with form and substance. The result shot far over the heads of the country subscribers, and hit the bull's-eye of a big city daily.

Mr. Opp's excitement was intense when he found that an editorial from "The Opp Eagle" had been copied in a New York paper. The fact that it was not his own never for a moment dimmed the glory of the compliment.

"We are getting notorious," he said exultingly to Hinton. "There are few, if any, papers that in less than a year has extended its influence as far as the Atlantic Ocean. Now I am considering if it wouldn't be a wise and judicious thing to get you on the staff permanent--while you are here, that is. Of course you understand I am invested up pretty close; but I'd be willing to let you have a little of my oil stock in payment for services."

Hinton laughingly shook his head. "Whenever you run short of material, you can call on me. The honor of seeing my humble efforts borne aloft on the wings of 'The Opp Eagle' will be sufficient reward."

Having once conceived it as a favor that was in his power to bestow, Mr.

Opp lost no opportunity for inviting contributions from the aspiring author.

As Hinton's strength returned, Mr. Opp adopted him as a protege, at first patronizing him, then consulting him, and finally frankly appealing to him. For during the long afternoon walks which they got into the habit of taking together, Mr. Opp, in spite of bl.u.s.ter and brag and evasion, found that he was constantly being embarra.s.sed by a question, a reference, a statement from his young friend. It was the first time he had ever experienced any difficulty in keeping his head above the waves of his own ignorance.

"You see," he said one day by way of explanation, "my genius was never properly tutored in early youth. It's what some might regard as a remarkable brain that could cope with all the different varieties of enterprises that I have engaged in, with no instruction or guidance but just the natural elements that G.o.d give it in the beginning."

But in spite of Mr. Opp's lenient att.i.tude toward his intellectual short-comings, it was evident that upon the serene horizon of his egotism small clouds of humility were threatening to gather.

Hinton, restlessly seeking for something to fill the vacuum of his days, found Mr. Opp and his paper a growing source of diversion. "The Opp Eagle," at first an object of ridicule, gradually became a point of interest in his limited range of vision. Under his suggestions it was enlarged and improved, and induced to publish news not strictly local.

Mr. Opp, meanwhile, was buzzing as persistently and ineffectually as a fly on a window-pane. The night before Guinevere's return, he found that, in order to accomplish all that he was committed to, it would be necessary to spend the night at the office.

The concert for which the Unique Orchestra had been making night hideous for two weeks had just come to a successful close, and the editor found himself at a late hour tramping out the lonely road that led to the office with the prospect of a couple of hours' work to do before he could seek a well-earned rest upon the office bench.

He was flushed with his double triumph as director and cornet soloist, and still thrilled by the mighty notes he had breathed into his beloved instrument.

The violin sobs, the flute complains, the drum insists, but the cornet brags, and Mr. Opp found it the instrument through which he could best express himself.

It was midnight, and the moon, one moment shining brightly and the next lost behind a flying cloud, sent all sorts of queer shadows scurrying among the trees. Mr. Opp thought once that he saw the figure of a man appear and disappear in the road before him, but he was so engrossed in joyful antic.i.p.ation of the morrow that he gave the incident no attention. As he was pa.s.sing the Gusty house, he was rudely plunged from sentiment into suspicion by the sight of a figure stealthily moving along the wall beneath the front windows.

Mr. Opp crouched behind the fence to watch him, but the moon took that inopportune moment to sink into a bank of clouds, and the yard was left in darkness. No sound broke the stillness save the far-off bark of a dog or an occasional croak from a bullfrog. Mr. Opp waited and listened in a state of intense suspense. Presently he heard the unmistakable sound of a window being cautiously raised, and then just as cautiously lowered.

Summoning all his courage, he skirted the yard and hid in the bushes near the house. Nothing was to be seen or heard. He watched for a light at any of the windows, but none came.

The rash desire to capture the burglar single-handed, and thus distinguish himself in the eyes of Guinevere's mother, caused Mr. Opp to stiffen his knees and a.s.sume a fierce and determined expression. But he was armed only with his cornet, which, though often deadly as an instrument of attack, has never been recognized as a weapon of defense.

There seemed no alternative but to waken Hinton and effect a simultaneous attack from within and without.

After throwing a few unsuccessful pebbles at Hinton's window, Mr. Opp remembered a ladder he had seen at the back of the barnyard. Shaking as if with the ague, but breathing dauntless courage, he departed in great excitement to procure it.

Unfortunately another party was in possession. A dozen guinea-fowls were roosting on the rungs, and when he gave them to understand they were to vacate they raised an outcry that would have quelled the ardor of a less valiant knight.

But the romantic nature of the adventure had fired Mr. Opp's imagination. He already saw himself lightly dusting his hands after throttling the intruder, and smiling away Mrs. Gusty's solicitude for his safety. Meanwhile he staggered back to the house with his burden, dodging fearfully at every shadow, and painfully aware that his heart was beating a tattoo on his ear-drums.

Placing the ladder as quietly as possible under Hinton's window, he cautiously began the ascent. The sudden outburst of the guineas had set his nerves a-quiver, and what with his breathless condition, and a predisposition to giddiness, he found some difficulty in reaching the sill. When at last he succeeded, he saw, by the light of the now refulgent moon, the figure of Hinton lying across the foot of the bed, dressed, but asleep. The opening not being sufficiently large to admit him, he thrust in his head and whispered hoa.r.s.ely through his chattering teeth:

"Hinton! I say, Hinton, there's a burglar in the house!"

Hinton started up, and stared dully at the excited apparition.

"Hush!" whispered Mr. Opp, dramatically, lifting a warning hand. "I've been tracking the scoundrel for half an hour. He's in the house now.

We'll surround him. We'll bind him hand and foot. You get the front door open, and I'll meet you on the outside. It's all planned; just do as I say."

Hinton, who was springing for the door, paused with his hand on the k.n.o.b. "What's that?"