The--infamous _Hollaston Gazette_--"

"The _Hollaston Gazette_--is that published here?" asked Varney in
surprise, for the _Gazette_ was famous: one of those very rare
small-town newspapers which, by reason of great age and signal editorial
ability, have earned a national place in American journalism.

"Named after the county. You have heard of it?" said the young man in a
faintly mocking voice, and immediately went on: "The _Gazette_ is eighty
years old. Even now, in these bad times, everybody in the county takes
it. They get all their opinions from it, ready-made. It is their Bible.
A fool can see what a power such a paper is. For seventy-seven years the
_Gazette_ fully deserved it. That was the way it won it. But all that is
changed now. And the paper is making a great deal of money."

"It is crooked, then?"

"I said, did I not, that it was for Ryan?"

He lounged further back in the shadows upon his packing-case; he
appeared not to be feeling well at all. Varney regarded him with puzzled
interest.

"A very depressing little story," he suggested, "but after all, hardly a
novel one. I don't yet altogether grasp why--"

"Your Jeffries of a friend is a red-hot political theorist, isn't he?"
asked the other apathetically. "Our Hunston politicians are practical
men. They are after results, and seek them with small regard, I fear,
to copy-book precepts. You follow me? Rusticating strangers, visiting