"But it wasn't to their advantage," said Hinton, smiling. "You forget the amount of money involved."

"No," declared Mr. Opp with some heat, "you do those gentlemen a injustice. There ain't a individual of them that is capable of a dishonest act, any more than you or me. They just lacked the experience in dealing with a man like Mr. Mathews."

Hinton's smile broadened; he reached over and grasped Mr. Opp's hand.

"Do you know you are a rattling good fellow? I am sorry things have gotten so balled up with you."

"I'll pay out," said the editor. "It'll take some time, but I've got a remarkable ability for work in me. I don't mind telling you, though I'll have to ask you not to mention the fact to no one at present, that I am considering inventing a patent. It's a sort of improved type-setter, one of the most remarkable things you ever witnessed. I never knew till about six months ago what a scientific turn my mind could take. I've worked this whole thing out in my brain without the aid of a model of any sort."

"In the meanwhile," said Hinton, "I hear you will have to sell your paper."

Mr. Opp winced, and the lines in his face deepened. "Well, yes," he said, "I have about decided to sell, provided I keep the editorship, of course. After my patent gets on the market I will soon be in a position to buy it back."

"Mr. Opp," said Hinton, "I've got a proposition to make to you. I have a moderate sum of money in bank which I want to invest in business. How would you like to sell out the paper to me, lock, stock, and barrel?"

Mr. Opp, whose eyes had been resting on the bills that strewed his table, looked up eagerly.

"You to own it, and me to run it?" he asked hopefully.

"No," said Hinton; "you would help me to run it, I hope, but I would be the editor. I have thought the matter over seriously, and I believe, with competent help, I can make the paper an up-to-date, self-supporting newspaper, in spite of my handicap."

Mr. Opp sat as if stunned by a blow. He had known for some time that he must sell the paper in order to meet his obligations, but the thought of relinquishing his control of it never dawned upon him. It was the pride of his heart, the one tangible achievement in a wilderness of dreams.

Life without Guinevere had seemed a desert; life without "The Opp Eagle" seemed chaos. He looked up bewildered.

"We'd continue on doing business here in the regular way?" he asked.

"No," said Hinton; "I would build a larger office uptown, and put in new presses; we could experiment with your new patent type-setter as soon as you got it ready."

But Mr. Opp was beyond pleasantries. "You'd keep Nick?" he asked. "I wouldn't consider anything that would cut Nick out."

"By all means," said Hinton. "I'm counting on you and Nick to initiate me into the mysteries of the profession. You could be city editor, and Nick--well, we could make him foreman."

One last hope was left to Mr. Opp, and he clung to it desperately, not daring to voice it until the end.

"The name," he said faintly, "would of course remain 'The Opp Eagle'?"

Hinton dropped his eyes; he could not stand the wistful appeal in the drawn face opposite.

"No," he said shortly; "that's a--little too personal. I think I should call my paper 'The Weekly News.'"

Mr. Opp could never distinctly remember what happened after that. He knew that he had at first declined the offer, that he had been argued with, had reconsidered, and finally accepted a larger sum than he had asked for; but the details of the transaction were like the setting of bones after an accident.

He remembered that he had sat where Hinton left him, staring at the floor until Nick came to close the office; then he had a vague impression of crossing the fields and standing with his head against the old sycamore-tree where the birds had once whispered of love. After that he knew that he had met Hinton and Guinevere coming up the river road hand in hand, that he had gotten home after supper was over, and had built a bridge of blocks for Miss Kippy.

Then suddenly he had wakened to full consciousness, staggered out of the house to the woodshed, and shivered down into a miserable heap. There in the darkness he seemed to see things, for the first time in his life, quite as they were. His gaze, accustomed to the glittering promise of the future, peered fearfully into the past, and reviewed the long line of groundless hopes, of empty projects, of self-deceptions. Shorn of its petty shams and deceits, and stripped of its counterfeit armor of conceit, his life lay naked before him, a pitiful, starved, futile thing.

"I've just been similar to Kippy," he sobbed, with his face in his hands, "continually pretending what wasn't so. I acted like I was young, and good-looking, and--and highly educated; and look at me! Look at me!"

he demanded fiercely of the kindling-wood.

Mr. Opp had been fighting a long duel--a duel with Circ.u.mstance, and Mr.

Opp was vanquished. The acknowledgment of defeat, even to himself, gave it the final stamp of verity. He had fought valiantly, with what poor weapons he had, but the thrusts had been too many and too sure. He lay clothed in his strange new garment of humility, and wondered why he did not want to die. He did not realize that in losing everything else, he had won the greater stake of character for which he had been unconsciously fighting all along.

The kitchen door opened, and he saw Miss Kippy's figure silhouetted against the light.

"Brother D.," she called impatiently, "ain't you coming back to play with me?"

He scrambled to his feet and made a hasty and somewhat guilty effort to compose himself.

"Yes, I'm a-coming," he answered briskly, as he smoothed his scant locks and straightened his tie. "You go on ahead and gather up the blocks; I only stopped playing for a little spell."

XVIII

The marriage of Guinevere Gusty and Willard Hinton took place in mid-winter, and the account of it, published in the last issue of "The Opp Eagle," proved that the eagle, like the swan, has its death-song.

Like many of the masterpieces of literature, the article had been written in anguish of spirit; but art, like nature, ignores the process, and reckons only the result, and the result, in Mr. Opp's opinion at least, more than justified the effort.

"In these strenuous, history-making meanderings of the sands of life,"

it ran, "we sometimes overlook or neglect particulars in events which prove of larger importance than appears on the surface. The case to which we have allusion to is the wedding which was solemnized at eventide at the residence of the bride's mother. The Gustys may be justly considered one of the best-furnished families in the county, and the parlors were only less beautiful than the only daughter there presiding. The collation served therein was of such a liberal nature that every guest, we might venture to say, took dinner enough home for supper. It has seldom been our fate to meet a gentleman of such intelligent attainments as Mr. Hinton, and his entire future existence, be it long or short, cannot fail of being thrice blessed by the companionship of the one who has confided her trust to him,--her choice, world-wide. Although a bachelor ourself, we know what happiness must be theirs, and with all our heart we vouchsafe them a joyful voyage across the uncertain billows of Time until their nuptial or matrimonial bark shall have been safely moored in the haven of everlasting bliss, where the storms of this life spread not their violence."

Some men spend their lives in the valley, and some are born and die on the heights; but it was Mr. Opp's fate to climb from the valley to his own little mountain-top of prosperity, only to have to climb down on the other side. It was evidence of his genius that in time he persuaded himself and his fellow-citizens that it was exactly what he wanted to do.

"That there life of managing and promoting was all right in its way," he said one day to a group of men at the post-office, "but a man owes something to himself, don't he? Now that the town has got well started, and Mr. Hinton is going to take main charge of the paper, I'll be freer than I been for years to put some of my ideas into practice."

"We are counting on getting you back in the orchestra," said Mr. Gallop, whose admiration for Mr. Opp retained its pristine bloom.

Mr. Opp shook his head regretfully. "No, I'm going to give all my evenings over to study. This present enterprise I am engaged on requires a lot of personal application. I sometimes think that I have in the past scattered my forces too much, in a way."

So persistently did Mr. Opp refer to the mysterious work that was engrossing him that he reduced Mr. Gallop's curiosity to the saturation-point.

When he was no longer able to stand it, the telegraph operator determined upon a tour of investigation. The projected presentation of a new cornet by the Unique Orchestra to its erstwhile leader proved a slender excuse for a call, and while he knew that, with the exception of Willard Hinton, no visitor had ever been known to cross the Opp threshold, yet he permitted desire to overrule delicacy.

It was a bl.u.s.tery December night when he climbed the hill, and he had to pause several times during the ascent to gain sufficient breath to proceed. By the time he reached the house he was quite speechless, and he dropped on the steps to rest a moment before knocking. As he sat there trying to imagine the flying-machine or torpedo-boat upon which he felt certain Mr. Opp was engaged, he became aware of voices from within, and looking up, he saw the window above him was slightly raised.

Overcome by his desire to see his friend at work upon his great invention, he cautiously tiptoed across the porch and peeped in.

The low-ceilinged old room was bright with firelight, and in the center of it, with his knees drawn up, his toes turned in, and his tongue thrust out, sat Mr. Opp, absorbed in an object which he held between his knees. Miss Kippy knelt before him, eagerly watching proceedings.

Mr. Gallop craned his neck to see what it was that held their interest, and at last discovered that they were fitting a dress on a large china doll.

Miss Kippy's voice broke the silence. "You can sew nice," she was saying; "you can sew prettier than Aunt Tish."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'Can't n.o.body beat me making skirts'"]

"Can't n.o.body beat me making skirts," said Mr. Opp, and Mr. Gallop saw him push his needle through a bit of cloth, with the handle of the shovel; "but sleeves is a more particular proposition. Why, I'd rather thread three needles than to fix in one sleeve! Why don't you make like it's summer-time and let her go without any?"