Haring eagerly gave the assurance. He would have given assurance of Banneker's head on a salver to be rid of these persecuting autocrats.

They withdrew, leaving behind an atmosphere of threat and disaster, dark, inglorious clouds of which Haring trailed behind him when he entered the office of the owner with his countenance of woe. His postulate was that Mr. Marrineal should go to his marplot editor and duly to him lay down the law; no more offending of the valuable department-store advertisers. No; nor of any others. Or he, Haring (greatly daring), would do it himself.

Beside the sweating and agonizing business manager, Marrineal looked very cool and tolerant and mildly amused.

"If you did that, Mr. Haring, do you appreciate what the result would be? We should have another editorial worse than the first, as soon as Mr. Banneker could think it out. No; you leave this to me. I'll manage it."

His management took the negative form of a profound silence upon the explicit point. But on the following morning Banneker found upon his desk a complete analytical table showing the advertising revenue of the paper by classes, with a star over the department-store list, indicating a dated withdrawal of twenty-two thousand dollars a year. The date was of that day. Thus was Banneker enabled to figure out, by a simple process, the loss to himself of any class of advertising, or even small group in a class, dropping out of the paper. It was clever of Marrineal, he admitted to himself, and, in a way, disappointing. His proffered gage of battle had been refused, almost ignored. The issue was not to be joined when he was ready, but when Marrineal was ready, and on Marrineal's own ground. Very well, Banneker could be a good waiter.

Meantime he had at least asserted his independence.

Io called him up by 'phone, avid of news of the editorial, and he was permitted to take her to luncheon and tell her all about it. In her opinion he had won a victory; established a position. Banneker was far less sanguine; he had come to entertain a considerable respect for Marrineal's capacity. And he had another and more immediate complication on his mind, which fact his companion, by some occult exercise of divination, perceived.

"What else is worrying you, Ban?" she asked.

Banneker did not want to talk about that. He wanted to talk about Io, about themselves. He said so. She shook her head.

"Tell me about the paper."

"Oh, just the usual complications. There's nothing to interest you in them."

"Everything," she maintained ardently.

Banneker caught his breath. Had she given him her lips, it could hardly have meant more--perhaps not meant so much as this tranquil assumption of her right to share in the major concerns of his life.

"If you've been reading the paper," he began, and waited for her silent nod before going on, "you know our attitude toward organized labor."

"Yes. You are for it when it is right and not always against it when it is wrong."

"One can't split hairs in a matter of editorial policy. I've made The Patriot practically the mouthpiece of labor in this city; much more so than the official organ, which has no influence and a small following.

Just now I'm specially anxious to hold them in line for the mayoralty campaign. We've got to elect Robert Laird. Otherwise we'll have such an orgy of graft and rottenness as the city has never seen."

"Isn't the labor element for Laird?"

"It isn't against him, except that he is naturally regarded as a silk-stocking. The difficulty isn't politics. There's some new influence in local labor circles that is working against me; against The Patriot.

I think it's a fellow named McClintick, a new man from the West."

"Perhaps he wants to be bought off."

"You're thinking of the old style of labor leader," returned Banneker.

"It isn't as simple as that. No; from what I hear, he's a fanatic. And he has great influence."

"Get hold of him and talk it out with him," advised Io.

"I intend to." He brooded for a moment. "There isn't a man in New York,"

he said fretfully, "that has stood for the interests of the masses and against the power of money as I have. Why, Io, before we cut loose in The Patriot, a banker or a railroad president was sacrosanct. His words were received with awe. Wall Street was the holy of holies, not to be profaned by the slightest hint of impiety. Well, we've changed all that!

Not I, alone. Our cartoons have done more than the editorials. Every other paper in town has had to follow our lead. Even The Ledger."

"I like The Ledger," declared Io.

"Why?"

"I don't know. It has a sort of dignity; the dignity of self-respect."

"Hasn't The Patriot?" demanded the jealous Banneker.

"Not a bit," she answered frankly, "except for your editorials. They have the dignity of good workmanship, and honesty, and courage, even when you're wrong."

"Are we so often wrong, Io?" he said wistfully.

"Dear boy, you can't expect a girl, brought up as I have been, to believe that society is upside down, and would be better if it were tipped over the other way and run by a lot of hod-carriers and ditch-diggers and cooks. Can you, now?"

"Of course not. Nor is that what I advocate. I'm for the under dog. For fair play. So are you, aren't you? I saw your name on the Committee List of the Consumers' League, dealing with conditions in the department stores."

"That's different," she said. "Those girls haven't a chance in some of the shops. They're brutalized. The stores don't even pretend to obey the laws. We are trying to work out some sort of organization, now, for them."

"Yet you're hostile to organized labor! Who shall ever understand the feminine mind! Some day you'll be coming to us for help."

"Very likely. It must be a curious sensation, Ban, to have the consciousness of the power that you wield, and to be responsible to nobody on earth."

"To the public that reads us," he corrected.

"Not a real responsibility. There is no authority over you; no appeal from your judgments. Hasn't that something to do with people's dislike and distrust of the newspapers; the sense that so much irresponsible power is wrong?"

"Yet," he said, "any kind of censorship is worse than the evil it remedies. I've never shown you my creed, have I?"

His manner was half jocular; there was a smile on his lips, but his eyes seemed to look beyond the petty troubles and problems of his craft to a final and firm verity.

"Tell me," she bade him.

He drew his watch out and opened the back. For a moment she thought, with confused emotions, that she would see there a picture of herself of which he might have possessed himself somewhere. She closed her eyes momentarily against the fear of that anti-climax. When she opened them, it was to read, in a clear, fine print those high and sure words of Milton's noblest message:

And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter? Her confuting is the best and surest suppressing.

Twice she read the pregnant message.

"I have it," said she gravely. "To keep--for always."

"Some day I'll put it at the head of The Patriot."

"Why not now?"

"Not ready. I want to be surer; absolutely sure."

"I'm sure," she declared superbly; "of you."

"You make me sure of myself, Io. But there's Marrineal."

"Yes; there's Marrineal. You must have a paper of your own, mustn't you, Ban, eventually?"