“'—Little rill
That curved and spattered around the hill.'
“I guess that's all right, to use 'hill' twice; don't you reckon so?
“'And the orphan he stood there until
The wind and all gave him a chill;
And he sickened—'”
That day Ross read no more, for the tall printer, seemingly incapable of coherent speech, kicked the desk impotently, threw his arms above his head, and, his companions confidently looking to see him foam at the mouth, lost his balance and toppled over backward, his extensive legs waving wildly in the air as he struck the floor. Mr. Schofield fled.
Parker made no effort to rise, but lay glaring at the ceiling, breathing hard. He remained in that position for a long time, until finally the glaze wore away from his eyes and a more rational expression settled over his features. Mr. Fisbee addressed him timidly: “You don't think we could reduce the size of the sheet?”
“It would kill him,” answered his prostrate companion. “We've got to fill her solid some way, though I give up; I don't know how. How that man has worked! It was genius. He just floated around the county and soaked in items, and he wrote editorials that people read. One thing's certain: we can't do it. We're ruining his paper for him, and when he gets able to read, it'll hurt him bad. Mighty few knew how much pride he had in it. Has it struck you that now would be a precious good time for it to occur to Rod McCune to come out of his hole? Suppose we go by the board, what's to stop him? What's to stop him, anyway? Who knows where the boss put those copies and affidavits, and if we did know, would we know the best way to use 'em? If we did, what's to keep the 'Herald' alive until McCune lifts his head? And if we don't stop him, the 'Carlow County Herald' is finished. Something's got to be done!'”
No one realized this more poignantly than Mr. Fisbee, but no one was less capable of doing something of his own initiation. And although the Tuesday issue was forthcoming, embarrassingly pale in spots—most spots—Mr. Martin remarked rather publicly that the items were not what you might call stirring, and that the unpatented pages put him in mind of Jones's field in winter with a dozen chunks of coal dropped in the snow. And his observations on the later issues of the week (issues which were put forth with a suggestion of spasm, and possibly to the permanent injury of Mr. Parker's health, he looked so thin) were too cruelly unkind to be repeated here. Indeed, Mr. Fisbee, Parker, the luckless Mr. Schofield, and the young Tipworthy may be not untruthfully likened to a band of devoted mariners lost in the cold and glaring regions of a journalistic Greenland: limitless plains of empty white paper extending about them as far as the eye could reach, while life depended upon their making these terrible voids productive; and they shrank appalled from the task, knowing no means to fertilize the barrens; having no talent to bring the still snows into harvests, and already feeling-in the chill of Mr. Martin's remarks—a touch of the frost that might wither them.
It was Fisbee who caught the first glimpse of a relief expedition clipping the rough seas on its lively way to rescue them, and, although his first glimpse of the jaunty pennant of the relieving vessels was over the shoulder of an iceberg, nothing was surer than that the craft was flying to them with all good and joyous speed. The iceberg just mentioned assumed—by no melting process, one may be sure—the form of a long letter, first postmarked at Rouen, and its latter substance was as follows:
“Henry and I have always believed you as selfish, James Fisbee, as you are self-ingrossed and incapable. She has told us of your 'renunciation'; of your 'forbidding' her to remain with you; how you 'commanded,' after you had 'begged' her, to return to us, and how her conscience told her she should stay and share your life in spite of our long care of her, but that she yielded to your 'wishes' and our entreaty. What have you ever done for her and what have you to offer her? She is our daughter, and needless to say we shall still take care of her, for no one believes you capable of it, even in that miserable place, and, of course, in time she will return to her better wisdom, her home, and her duty. I need scarcely say we have given up the happy months we had planned to spend in Dresden. Henry and I can only stay at home to pray that her preposterous mania will wear itself out in short order, as she will find herself unfitted for the ridiculous task which she insists upon attempting against the earnest wishes of us who have been more than father and mother to her. Of course, she has talked volumes of her affection for us, and of her gratitude, which we do not want—we only want her to stay with us. Please, please try to make her come back to us—we cannot bear it long. If you are a man you will send her to us soon. Her excuse for not returning on the day we wired our intention to go abroad at once (and I may as well tell you now that our intention to go was formed in order to bring affairs to a crisis and to draw her away from your influence—we always dreaded her visit to you and held it off for years)—her excuse was that your best friend, and, as I understand it, your patron, had been injured in some brawl in that Christian country of yours—a charming place to take a girl like her—and she would not leave you in your 'distress' until more was known of the man's injuries. And now she insists—and you will know it from her by the next mail—on returning to Plattville, forsooth, because she has been reading your newspaper, and she says she knows you are in difficulties over it, and it is her moral obligation—as by some wild reasoning of her own she considers herself responsible for your ruffling patron's having been alone when he was shot—to go down and help. I suppose he made love to her, as all the young men she meets always do, sooner or later, but I have no fear of any rustic entanglements tor her; she has never been really interested, save in one affair. We are quite powerless—we have done everything; but we cannot alter her determination to edit your paper for you. Naturally, she knows nothing whatever about such work, but she says, with the air of triumphantly quelching all such argument, that she has talked a great deal to Mr. Macauley of the 'Journal.' Mr. Macauley is the affair I have alluded to; he is what she has meant when she has said, at different times, that she was interested in journalism. But she is very business-like now. She has bought a typewriter and purchased a great number of soft pencils and erasers at an art shop; I am only surprised that she does not intend to edit your miserable paper in water-colors. She is coming at once. For mercy's sake don't telegraph her not to; your forbiddings work the wrong way. Our only hope is that she will find the conditions so utterly discouraging at the very start that she will give it up and come home. If you are a man you will help to make them so. She has promised to stay with that country girl with whom she contracted such an incomprehensible friendship at Miss Jennings's.
“Oh, James, pray for grace to be a man once in your life and send her back to us! Be a man—try to be a man! Remember the angel you killed! Remember all we have done for you and what a return you have made, and be a man for the first time. Try and be a man!