"No," said Varney, without anger. "I am telling you the truth and you know it."
"Well—there are other papers,—other towns," cried Hammerton passionately. "What I've got on you will sell anywhere. Why, damn you, damn you, damn you—don't you know you'll have to kill me to hush this up?"
"No," said Varney, "I'm going to do better than that. I'm going to make a friend of you. I'm going to make you editor of the Gazette in Smith's place with double your present salary and an interest in the paper."
There was black silence, more thrilling than any speech.
"Will you take it?" asked Varney.
Then the boy's overstrained self-command snapped like a bow-string and his breast shook with sudden hysteria. "Will I take it?" he cried with a gasping laugh that was rather more like a sob. "Will I take the Court of St. James? Will I take money from home? Oh, my God, will I take it!"
"Hooray!" rang Peter's great voice out of the gloom. "Hip, hip, hooray for Editor Hammerton!"
Peter's tribute, in reality, was not so much for Hammerton's acceptance as for the astonishing neatness with which Varney had disposed of the editorship of his paper. But to Varney, rising limply from Hammerton's chest at the edge of the dark road, that cheer meant only that he had kicked the last obstacle out of his path and that he and Mary were going to New York to-morrow.