I find myself loitering unaccountably over every memory of those days in the office of the Star. Not a week passed that I did not make two or three or more trips from my farm to Hempfield, sometimes tramping by the short cut across the fields and through the lanes, sometimes driving my old mare in the town road, and always with the problems of Anthy and Nort uppermost in my mind. Sometimes when I could get away, and sometimes when I couldn't (Harriet smiling discreetly), I went up in the daytime to lend a hand in the office (especially on press days), and often in the evening I went for a talk with Nort or Anthy or the old Captain, or else for a good comfortable silence with Fergus while he sat tipped back in his chair on the little porch of the office, and smoked a pipe or so—and the daylight slowly went out, the moist evening odours rose up from the garden, and the noises in the street quieted down.

As I have said, the incident of the fan marked the end of the era of Nort the subdued. From that time onward, for a time, it was Nort the ascendant—yes, Nort the obstreperous! As I look back upon it now I have an amusing vision of one after another of us hanging desperately to the coat tails of our PhaËton to prevent him from driving the chariot of the Star quite to destruction.

It was this way with Nort. He had begun to recover from the remorse and discouragement which had brought him to Hempfield. If he had been in the city he would probably have felt so thoroughly restored and so virtuous that he would have sought out his old companions and plunged with renewed zest into the old life of excitement. But being in the quiet of the country he had to find some outlet for his high spirits, some food for his curious, lively, inventive mind. What a fascinator he was in those days, anyway! I think he put his spell upon all of us, even to a certain extent upon Ed Smith at first. To me, in particular, who have grown perhaps too reflective, too introspective, with the years of quietude on my farm, he seemed incredibly alive, so that I was never tired of watching him. He was like the boy I had been, or dreamed I had been, and could never be again.

And yet I did not then accept him utterly, as the loyal old Captain had done. I was not sure of him. His attitude toward life in those days, while I dislike the comparison, was similar to that of Ed Smith, though the end was different. If Ed was looking for his own aggrandizement, Nort was not the less eagerly in pursuit of his own amusement and pleasure. I had a feeling that he would play with us a while because we amused him, and when he got tired or bored—that would be the end of us. Up to that moment Nort had never really become entangled with life: life had never hurt him. Things and events were like moving pictures, which he enjoyed hotly, which amused him uproariously, or which bored him desperately.

As fate would have it—Ed Smith's fate—Nort's opportunity came in August. It was the occasion, as I remember it, of some outing of the State Editors' Association, and Ed planned to be absent for two weeks. He evidently felt that he could now entrust the destinies of the Star for a brief time to his associates. But he tore himself away with evident reluctance. How could the Star be safely left to the mercies of the old Captain (who had been its titular editor for thirty years), or to Anthy (who was merely its owner), to say nothing of such disturbing elements as Fergus and Nort and me?

A deep sigh of relief seemed to rise from the office of the Star. One fancied that Dick, the canary, chirped more cheerfully, and Fergus swore that he found Tom, the cat, sleeping in the editorial chair within three hours after Ed departed. As for the Captain, he came in thumping his cane and clearing his throat with something of his old-time energy, and even Anthy wore a different look.

I can see Nort yet leaning against the imposing stone, one leg crossed over the other, his bare inky arms folded negligently, his thick hair tumbling about on his head—and amusement darkening in his eyes. Fergus was cocked up on a stool by the cases; the Captain, who had just finished an editorial further pulverizing the fragments of William J. Bryan, was leaning back in his chair comfortably smoking his pipe; and Anthy, having slipped off her apron, was preparing to go home for supper.

"Well!" exclaimed Nort, drawing a long breath, "I never imagined it would feel so good to be orfunts."

The laugh which followed this remark was as irresistible as it was spontaneous. It expressed exactly what we all felt. I glanced at Anthy. She evidently considered it her duty to frown upon such disloyalty, but couldn't. She was laughing, too. It seemed to break the tension and bring us all close together.

It will be seen from this how Nort had been growing since he came with us, a mere vagabond, to help Fergus. He had become one of us.

"Don't see how we're ever goin' to get out a paper," remarked Fergus.

This bit of irony was lost on the old Captain.

"Fudge!" he exclaimed indignantly. "Get out a paper! We were publishing the Star in Hempfield before ever Ed Smith was born."

"I'll tell you what, Cap'n—and Miss Doane," said Nort, "we ought to get out a paper this week that will show Ed a thing or two, stir things up a bit."

I saw Anthy turn toward him with a curious live look in her eyes. Youth had spoken to youth.

"We could do it!" she said, with unexpected energy. "We could just do it."

Nort unfurled his legs and walked nervously down the office.

"What would you put in her?" asked the practical Fergus.

"Put in her!" exclaimed Nort. "What couldn't you put in her? Put some life in her, I say. Stir things up."

"I have just written an editorial on William J. Bryan," remarked the Captain with deliberation.

"My father always used to say," said Anthy, "that the little things of life are really the big things. I didn't used to think so; it used to hurt me to see him waste his life writing items about the visits of the Backuses—you know what visitors the Backuses are—and the big squashes raised by Jim Palmer, and the meetings of the Masons and the Odd Fellows; but I believe he was successful with the Star because he packed it full of just such little personal news."

"Your father," I said, "was interested in people, in everything they did. It was what he was."

"I see that now," said Anthy.

"And when you come to think of it," I said, "we are more interested in people we know than in people we don't know. We can't escape our own neighbourhoods—and most of us don't want to."

"That's all right," said Nort; "but it seems to me since I've been in this town that it is just the things that are most interesting of all that don't get into the Star. Why, there's more amusing and thrilling news about Hempfield published every day up there on the veranda of the Hempfield House than gets into the Star in a month. I could publish a paper, at least once, that would——"

"I have always said," interrupted the Captain, "that the basic human interest was politics. Politics is the life of the people. Politics——"

Fergus's face cracked open with a smile.

"We might print a few poems."

He said it in such a tone of ironical humour and it seemed so absurd that we all laughed, except Nort.

Nort stopped suddenly, with his eyes gleaming.

"Why not, Fergus?" he exclaimed. "Great idea, Fergus."

With that he took up an envelope from the desk.

"Listen to this now," he said, "it came this morning; the Cap'n showed it to me."

He read aloud with great effect:

A PLEA FOR THE BALLOT

There was a maiden all forlorn,
Who milked a cow with a crumpled horn,
She churned the butter, and made the cheese,
And taught her brothers their ABC's.
She worked and scrubbed till her back was broke,
And paid her tax, but she couldn't vote.
Oh! you men look wise and laugh us to scorn,
We'll get the ballot as sure as you're born.

"I can guess who wrote that!" laughed Anthy. "It was Sophia Rhinehart."

"You're right," said Nort, "and I say, print it."

"There's a whole drawer full of poetry like that here in the desk," observed the Captain.

"I'll tell you, let's print it all!" said Nort. "This town is full of poetry. Let's let it out. That's a part of the life of Hempfield which the Star hasn't considered."

For the life of me I could not tell at the moment whether Nort was joking or not, but Fergus was troubled with no such uncertainty. He took his pipe out of his mouth, poked down the fire with his thumb, and observed:

"'Tain't poetry."

Anthy laughed. "No," she said, "it isn't Robert Burns. Fergus measures everything by 'The Twa Dogs.'"

"Whur'll ye do better?" responded Fergus.

"No," said Nort, warming up to his argument and convincing himself, I think, as he went along, "but I say it's interesting, and it's by people in Hempfield, and it's news. What could be a better personal item than a poem by—who was it, Miss Doane?"

"Sophia Rhinehart."

"The poet Sophia! Think of all of Sophia's cousins and uncles and aunts, and all the people in Hempfield, who will be shocked to know that Sophia has written a poem on woman suffrage."

"That's what I object to," boomed the Captain, "it's nonsense."

As I look back upon it now, it seems absurd, the irresistible way in which Nort swept the orfunts of the Star before him in his enthusiasm. A country newspaper office is one of the most democratic institutions in the world. The whole force, from proprietor down, works together and changes work. The editor is also compositor, and the compositor and office boy are reporters. No one poses as having any very superior knowledge, and it sometimes happens that a printer, like Fergus, comfortably drawing his regular wages, is better off for weeks at a time than the harassed proprietor himself.

Nort drew the poems, a big disorderly package of them, out of the editorial drawer, and read some of them aloud in his best manner, his face gleaming with amusement. Occasionally he would glance across at Anthy as if for approval. Anthy's face was a study. While it was evident that she was puzzled and uncertain, I could see that Nort was carrying her wholly with him. It was the common spirit of youth, adventure, daring—the common joy of revolt.

The upshot of the matter was that the office worked early and late during the next two or three days setting poetry. We chose mostly the short poems, including a veritable school of limericks, and in each case printed the name of the author in good large type. Some of the verses, to judge by their appearance, must have been in the office for several years—from the days of Anthy's father. Anthy's father had never destroyed the verses sent to him; he kept them, but rarely printed any of them. He had so deep a fondness for human beings, understood them so well, and Hempfield had come to be so much his own family to him, that he kept all these curious outreachings, whether of sorrow, or humour, or of mere empty exuberance or sentimentality. Often he laughed at them—but he kept them. Anthy had much the same deep feeling—which the Nort of that time could not have understood. She felt that there was something not quite sound about Nort's brilliant scheme, but when she objected or protested about some particular poem, Nort always swept her away with his eager, "Oh, put her in, put her in!"

For the top of the page Fergus set a heading, proofed it, and showed it to Nort.

"Not big enough," said Nort. "Got anything larger?"

Fergus thought he had, and presently returned with a heading in regular poster type:

POEMS OF HEMPFIELD

I can see Nort yet, holding it up for us to view, and shouting:

"Bully boy, Fergus, that'll get 'em!"

We introduced the poetry with a statement that for several years the Star had received poems, written by the citizens of the town and county, very few of which had been published. We presented them to our readers as one expression of the life, thought, and interests of our town.

On Wednesday—we went to press Wednesday afternoon—Nort came in from dinner with a broad smile on his face.

"Got another poem," he said.

"Humph," growled Fergus, who knew that he would have to set it up.

"I stopped at the corner as I came along, and old John Tole was standing out in front of his store." Here Nort, thrusting both hands into his rear trousers pockets, leaned a little back and gave a perfect imitation of the familiar figure of our town druggist. "'Mr. Tole,' I said, 'the Star is going to print the poems of Hempfield this week. Haven't you a favourite poem you can put in?' Well, you should have seen the old fellow grin. 'Yes,' says he, 'I've got a favour-ite poem.' I asked him what it was. He kept on smiling, and finally he said:

'I keep a plaster, in case of disaster,
And also a pill, in case of an ill.'"

Nort shook with laughter.

"George! I wish you could have heard him repeat it: 'And also a pi-ll in case of an i-ll.'"

He had the whole office laughing with him.

"I say, let's put it in the Star! 'John Tole's Favourite Poem,' What do you say, Miss Doane?"

He stood there such a figure of irresponsible and contagious youth as I can never forget.

"Tole hasn't favoured the Star with any advertising for over twenty years," observed the Captain.

"We'll advertise him, anyhow," said Nort.

And so it went in, at a special place in the middle of the page. Fergus grumbled and growled, of course, but was really more interested and excited, I think, than he had been before in years. "Fergus's great idea," "Fergus's brilliant thought," was the way Nort referred to the printing of the poetry. For two people so utterly unlike, Fergus and Nort got an extraordinary amount of amusement out of each other.

In order to make room for the poetry something else, of course, had to be left out, and partly by chance and partly through the antagonism of the Captain, we omitted two paragraphs that Ed Smith had left on the stone for use in the next issue of the paper. One was a flattering comment on the new electric light company that was about to supply Hempfield and other nearby towns with current.

"Seems to me," said Fergus, "we've had enough electric light news for a while."

"Cut her out, then," said Nort, as though he owned the paper.

The other was a cleverly worded paragraph about the candidacy of a certain D.J. McCullum for the legislature. When the Captain saw it he snorted with indignation.

"A regular old Democrat!" he exclaimed. "Now what was Ed Smith thinking of—putting a piece like that in the paper?"

We little knew what consequences were to follow upon a matter so apparently trivial as the omission of these few sticks of type from the Star.

At last the forms were locked, and Nort and Fergus carried them over to the press. It was an exciting occasion. Fergus at the press!

Usually Fergus contents himself by going about wearing his own crown of stiff red hair, but on press days he takes down an antique derby hat, the rim of which long ago disappeared. Small triangular holes have been cut in the crown for ventilators, and the outside is decorated with dabs of vari-coloured printer's ink. This bowl of a helmet Fergus sets upon his head, tilted a little back, so that he looks like a dervish. He now selects a long black cigar—it is only on press days that he discards his precious pipe—and having lighted it holds it in his mouth so that it points upward at an acute angle. He avoids the smoke which would naturally rise into his left eye by inclining his head a little to one side. He tinkers the rollers, he examines the inkwells, he tightens in the forms. He is very dignified, very sententious. It is an important occasion when Fergus goes to press. At last, when all is ready, Fergus stands upright for a moment, a figure of power and authority.

"Let 'er go," he says presently.

Nort pulls the lever: the fly moves majestically through the air, the rollers clack, and the very floor shakes with the emotion, the pain, of producing a free press in a free country.

But it is only for one or two impressions. Fergus suddenly raises his hand.

"Stop her, stop her," he commands, and when she has calmed down, Fergus, comparing the imprint with the form, and armed with paste pot and paper, or with block and mallet, adds the final artistic touches.

Sometimes, sitting here in my study, if I am a little lonely, I have only to call up the picture I have of Fergus at the press, and I am restored and comforted by the thought that there are still pleasant and amusing things in this world.

So we printed off the famous issue containing the poetry of Hempfield—and folded and mailed the papers. Nort, working like a demon, was the soul of the office. He made the work that week seem more interesting and important; he made an adventure and a romance out of the common task of a country printing-office.