the News. The idea is that I would simply send in the stuff?”
“That’s it.”
“I’ll tell you definitely in the morning, Benton, how much I will do. You can count on me for something, anyway.”
“By Jove, Barrington, I am grateful to you. But I really do not wish to impose on your good nature.”
“My good nature ———” Dane looked past him at Lee who stood in the doorway signalling with his eyes. “Will you dine with me, Benton?” he added.
“Oh, thanks, no, I can’t. Is it as late as that?” He got to his feet. “I must be getting along. Don’t get up, old chap. You look darned comfortable down there.” Roger beamed upon him almost affectionately.
But Dane did get up, and led the way through the hall to the front door.
“See you in the morning then, at the store. Will eleven suit you?”
“Admirably. Good-night.”
Roger clinked down the front steps feeling he had been very clever. If he could only secure Dane for the News he knew he would have the most potent and penetrating pen the elections would know.
Dane paced back and forth on his front verandah till his dinner should be ready. He paused now and then to look up at pallid gray clouds gathering density every minute in a bottle-green sky that was clearing a little after rain. Mingling with the mist that rose from the soaked earth he felt for the first time the stealthy approach of invisible things feeling their mysterious ways towards birth and their little measure of the spring. From the delicate tassels fringing the ferns by the river up to the dusted fresh green of the kauri saplings on the skyline another
