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“No.”

“But I am not so blind as he imagined. Well, such work must not be permitted to go unpunished.”

“It ought not to be. When a man indulges his ill-nature towards one individual with entire impunity, he soon gains courage for extended attacks, and others become sharers in the result of his vindictiveness. It is a duty that a man owes the community to let all who maliciously wrong him feel the consequences due to their acts.”

“No doubt you are right; and, if I keep my present mind, I shall let my particular friend Mr. Ayres feel that it is not always safe to stab even in the dark.”

The more Mr. Everton thought over the matter, the more fully satisfied was he that Ayres had made the attack upon him. This person was engaged as reporter and assistant editor of his newspaper, at a salary of ten dollars a week. He had a family, consisting of a wife and four children, the expense of whose maintenance rather exceeded than came within his income, and small accumulations of debt were a natural result.

Everton had felt some interest in this man, who possessed considerable ability as a writer; he saw that he had a heavy weight upon him, and often noticed that he looked anxious and dejected. On the very day previous to the appearance of the article above referred to, he had been thinking of him with more than usual interest, and had actually meditated an increase of salary as a compensation for more extended services. But that was out of the question now. The wanton and injurious attack which had just appeared shut up all his bowels of compassion, and so far from meditating the conferring of a benefit upon Ayres, he rather inclined to a dismissal of the young man from his establishment. The longer he dwelt upon it, the more inclined was he to pursue this course, and, finally, he made up his mind to take some one else in his place. One day, after some struggles with himself, he said, “Mr. Ayres, if you can suit yourself in a place, I wish you would do so in the course of the next week or two.”

The young man looked surprised, and the blood instantly suffused his face.

“Have I not given you satisfaction?” inquired Ayres.

“Yes–yes–I have no fault to find with you,” replied Mr. Everton, with some embarrassment in his air. “But I wish to bring in another person who has some claims on me.”

In this, Mr. Everton rather exceeded the truth. His equivocation was not manly, and Ayres was deceived by it into the inference of a reason for his dismissal foreign to the true one.

“Oh, very well,” he replied, coldly. “If you wish another to take my place, I will give it up immediately.”

Mr. Everton bowed with a formal air, and the young man, who felt hurt at his manner, and partly stunned by the unexpected announcement that he must give up his situation, retired at once.

On the next day, the Gazette contained another article, in which there was even a plainer reference to Mr. Everton than before, and it exhibited a bitterness of spirit that was vindictive. He was no longer in doubt as to the origin of these attacks, if he had been previously. In various parts of this last article, he could detect the particular style of Ayres.

“I see that fellow is at work on you again,” said the person with whom he had before conversed on the subject.

“Yes; but, like the viper, I think he is by this time aware that he is biting on a file.”

“Ah! Have you dismissed him from your service?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You have served him right. No man who attempted to injure me should eat my bread. What did he say?”

“Nothing. What could he say? When I told him to find himself another place as quickly as possible, his guilt wrote itself in his countenance.”