He was right: he was done, and he knew it.
Every newspaper man dreams of running, some day, a paper all his own, dreams of taking over some "small-town" paper, dreams of running it his own way and indulging his own ideas of how a paper should be run, dreams of wealth and fame in consequence. Once in a thousand cases, perhaps, the dream comes true.
Tom Dennis was at the end of his own particular dream. A college man, a star reporter on a Chicago daily, he had saved his money, and, at twenty-three, had become the owner of The Clarion in the sleepy little town of Marshville.
A meteoric year had ensued. Tom Dennis had gone to work to wake up Marshville—and he had succeeded. He had wakened Marshville to a lively animosity, a deadly resentment that a stranger should come in here and give advice. Marshville knew that it was a sleepy, dying, vicious, ingrowing little town—and Marshville wanted to be just that kind of town! So, when Tom Dennis tried to root out the viciousness and decay, Marshville was angered.
Six months passed, and the last of Tom Dennis' money was gone. He mortgaged the whole property, lock, stock, and barrel, and went on fighting. He had gleams of success, and the letters of Florence Hathaway had inspired him to renewed efforts, but now the end had come. He must either borrow on his personal credit, which was not extensive enough to carry him very long, or else go under.
"A smart Yankee packet lay out in the bay,
To me way hay, o-hi-o!
A-waiting for a fair wind to get under way,
A long time ago!"
The voice—a musing rumbling voice—came from the outer office, and it was a voice strange to Tom Dennis. But he scarce heard the words, or the swinging air. His hand had clenched upon the sheaf of papers, and his head had lowered. Chin to breast, he was in the agony of defeat; despite himself, despite his rugged features, slow tears were groping on his cheeks.
Those tears were not for himself, not for the fact of his failure here. A year ago Tom Dennis would have taken his defeat with a laugh and a joke, and he had not changed. It was not self-misery which drew those man's tears to his cheeks.
He was thinking of Florence Hathaway. He had found her here in the Clarion office a year ago, a society reporter; she was then supporting her slowly-dying mother. Two years previously her father, Captain Miles Hathaway, had been lost at sea somewhere in the Pacific; the girl had brought her mother back to Marshville, the mother's old home town, and there the mother had died. This had been three months after the coming of Tom Dennis.
For another three months, Florence Hathaway had stayed on with the Clarion—largely for love of Tom Dennis. Then had come the offer of a teacher's position in a private school in Chicago, and she had accepted the offer.