BUDDY HIGMAN, prosperous in a new blue-and-yellow mackinaw (Christmas), a pair of fur mittens (New Year’s), and high snow-boots (accumulated savings), entered the Fenchester Post-Office with the mien of one having important business with the Government. Four dollars a week was now Buddy’s princely stipend from The Guardian, for working before and after school hours at a special job of clipping and sorting advertisements from the press of the State, for purposes of comparison.

Occasionally Buddy brought in an item of news, with all the pride of a puppy bringing in a mouse, and beat it out with two fingers on a borrowed typewriter. Such of these contributions as got into print were paid for extra. Thereby Buddy was laboriously building up a bank account. It was young Mr. Higman’s intention to be, one day, Governor of the State. But in his wilder and more untrammeled flights, he hoped to be an editor like Mr. Robson. Buddy was an enthusiastic, even a hiero-phantic worker at his job. He was worth all that The Guardian paid him. Even had he not been, the Boss would have kept him on. For he was, all unknowing, a link; decidedly a tenuous link, but the only permanent and reliable one, between Jeremy and a foregone past.

At the stamp window Mr. Burton Higman, dealing with the United States Government, produced a silver dollar and gave his order in a firm and manly voice.

“Hullo, Buddy,” greeted the clerk. “Still got that girl in Yurrup, I see.”

A fire sprang and spread in Mr. Higman’s face. “And the rest in postal-cards,” he directed with dignity.

“You’re our best little customer,” continued the flippant clerk. (The little customer murderously contemplated arranging with The Guardian, later, to write an editorial about him and get him fired!) “Write to her every day, don’t che?”

“Shuttup, y’ ole fool!” retorted the infuriate youth, stepping aside to reckon up his purchase, lest it might be short.

“Yessir,” continued the blatant gossip, to the next comer. “He sure is the ready letter-writer, only an’’ original. Don’t see how he has time to help you edit your paper, Mr. Robson.”

Mr. Robson! The shock diverted Buddy at the twenty-eighth count. He looked up into the friendly face of the Boss.

He hastened to defend himself.

“I yain’t, either, Mr. Robson. ’Tain’t letters at all. They’re fer noospapers.”

“Are they?” said his chief, walking out into the wintry air with him. “I did n’t know we had so much foreign circulation, Buddy.”

“No, sir; we ain’t. Say, Boss,” he added after a pause, “we gained five new ads on The Record this week, an’ they only got one that we did n’t.”

“Good business, Buddy.”

“An’ I had two sticks in the paper yesterday. Dje see it? Story of the kid that fell through the ice.”

“You’ll be a reporter one of these days, son.”

“Oh, gee!” said Buddy ecstatically. Then, with resentment, “What’s the good of school, anyway?”

“If you’re going to be a real newspaper man you’ll need all the education you can get.”

“Yes, sir.” The aspiring neophyte sighed. “That’s what She says.”

There was but one “She” in the vocabulary of the exclusive and worshiping Buddy. Her name was never pronounced in the conversations on the subject between himself and his Boss. There was no need of being more specific, for either of them.

“It’s good advice.”

Buddy marched along beside his employer, obviously wriggling upon the hook of some pointed thought. Presently further reticence became impossible.

“Mr. Robson!”

“Well?”

“Them stamps—”

“What would the blue pencil do to a sentence beginning that way, Buddy?”

“Those stamps—it’s like I told the fresh guy at the window.”

“They’re for the circulation department?”

“No, sir. But they’re for circulation all right. I been sendin’ the paper every day to Hamburg.”

Jeremy’s pulses quickened. “Your own idea, Buddy?”

“Nope. I’m sendin’ it to Her. It ’s Her idear. She reads it reg’lar. She’s deeply int’rusted in my cay-reer.”

“Where did you get that? It doesn’t sound like Her.”

“It ain’t. Got it out of a book,” confessed the boy. “I write to Her, too,” he added happily. “She ast me to.”

“What does she think of your work?” inquired the Boss gravely.

“I ain’t heard from Her since I began gettin’ my stuff in the paper. But I guess She likes the paper all right. She tells me in most every letter what a big thing it is to help make a noospaper.”

“Does She? What else does She say?”

“I dunno.” The boy lost himself in thought. “It’s just a little here an’ a little there. She never says much; not any one time. But you can see She thinks a lot of the Business.”

“Now, you would n’t suppose that, would you?” said the artful Jeremy, feeding his hunger for the mere, dear memory of her brought back and made real by speech. “It must be because you told her you were going to be a newspaper man.”

“That’s it. She thinks it’s like being a preacher, only more so. She says you must n’t ever be mean or give away a friend or take advantage of having a noospaper to write for. An’ She says you got to always write what you honest-to-God think, because it’s yella to do the other thing. I guess She would n’t stand for a fake, not for a second! I bet She’d take the hide off’n some o’ them—o’ those Record guys. An’ She says the hardest thing ’ll be some time when there’s somethin’ a fella oughta write an’ that ’ll get him in wrong if he does write it, for him not to lay down an’ quit on it. An’ She says never, never to be afraid o’ your job, because that makes the job your boss an’ not you the job’s boss. An’ She says unless a guy can’t trust himself nobuddy can trust him an’ be safe, no matter how much they want to. I guess that’s about all right! Ain’t it, Boss?”

“It’s about all right, Buddy,” said Jeremy with an effort. That final bit of philosophy had stabbed.

After the presses had stopped and the offices had emptied, that evening, the editor of The Guardian sat at his desk with the little photograph of Marcia Ames before him. He looked into the frank and radiant face; into the eyes that met the world and its perplexities so steadily, with so pure and single-minded a challenge.

“You did n’t ask much, did you, my dear!” he said softly to the picture. “You only asked that I should be straight and honest; not a shifter and a coward. Well, it was too much. Buddy may do better. I’ll help him as far as I can. That’s a promise, my dear.”

He heard the departing Buddy whistling outside. His footsteps approached the door. Jeremy slipped a hand over the picture.

“Anythin’ more you want me for, Boss?” asked the boy, appearing in the doorway.

“No, Buddy. Good-night.”

“‘Night.” He paused. “I dunno’s She would have wanted me to tell you about the paper,” he said. “She never told me not to, though. I kinda thought you’d wanta know. I guess we got a man-size job makin’ a paper good enough for Her to read, ain’t we, Boss!”

“I guess we have,” said Jeremy steadily.

The door shut and he returned to his contemplation of the picture. “You read me, my dear,” he said. “You were reading me all the time. You read me in the Eli Wade story. And in the golf story. And perhaps in others I did n’t realize. You knew I’d come eventually to do just such a wretched crawl as I did on the German school bill. You knew that you never could trust yourself to me. You’d seen me go back on myself. You knew that a man who would go back on himself would go back on you when the test came.” He mused bitterly. “As I would have done,” said Jeremy Robson.

No man ever pronounced upon himself a harsher judgment.