"Maybe," ventured Horace, "the young lady did settlement work and read to the woman's kid, and the kid died, and the woman thought she'd said a charm over it."

Chillingworth grinned affectionately.

"Hold up," he commanded, "or you'll recall the very words of the charm."

Bennietod gasped and stared.

"Now, Bennietod?" Amory encouraged him.

"I t'ink," said the lad, "if she's a heiress, dis yere dagger-plunger is her mudder dat's been shut up in a mad-house to a fare-you-well."

Chillingworth nodded approvingly.

"Your imagination is toning down wonderfully," he flattered him. "A month ago you would have guessed that the mulatto lady was an Egyptian princess' messenger sent over here to get the heart from an American heiress as an ingredient for a complexion lotion. You're coming on famously, Todd."

"The German poet Wieland," began Benfy, clearing his throat, "has, in his epic of the _Oberon_ made admirable use of much the same idea, Mr. Chillingworth--"

Yells interrupted him. Mr. Benfy was too "well-read" to be wholly popular with the staff.

"Oh, well, the woman was crazy. That's about all," suggested Harding, and blushed to the line of his hair.

"Yes, I guess so," assented Holt, who lifted and lowered one shoulder as he talked, "or doped."

Chillingworth sighed and looked at them both with pursed lips.

"You two," he commented, "would get out a paper that everybody would know to be full of reliable facts, and that nobody would buy. To be born with a riotous imagination and then hardly ever to let it riot is to be a born newspaper man. Provin?"

The elder giant leaned back, his eyes partly closed.

"Is she engaged to be married?" he asked. "Is Miss Holland engaged?"

Chillingworth shook his head.

"No," he said, "not engaged. We knew that by tea-time the same day, Provin. Well, St. George?"

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