him, which he did not, he would have said that he was entirely alone. All at once his attention seemed to waver, and he passed his hand over his brow, while perplexity came into his face. Then he noticed that his pipe was out, and, knocking the ashes from it by rapping the bowl on the side of the table, he filled it with an absent-mindedness unusual with him. Again he turned to his writing, and again he passed his hand over his brow. Suddenly, without any apparent cause, he looked first to the right and then to the left of him. Once more he tried to write, but, noticing his pipe was out, he struck another match and nervously puffed away, until clouds of blue smoke rose around him. There was a look of annoyance and perplexity in his face as he bent resolutely to his writing. The door opened, and a man appeared on the threshold.
"Anything more about the convention, George?" he said.
"Yes; I am just finishing this. Sort of pen pictures, you know."
"Perhaps you can let me have what you have done. I'll fix it up."
"All right," said Stratton, bunching up the manuscript in front of him, and handing it to the city editor.
That functionary looked at the number of pages, and then at the writer.
"Much more of this, George?" he said. "We'll be a little short of room in the morning, you know."
"Well," said the other, sitting back in his chair, "it is pretty good stuff that. Folks always like the pen pictures of men engaged in the skirmish better than the reports of what most of them say."
"Yes," said the city editor, "that's so."
"Still," said Stratton, "we could cut it off at the last page. Just let me see the last two pages, will you?"
These were handed to him, and, running his eye through them, he drew his knife across one of the pages, and put at the bottom the cabalistic mark which indicated the end of the copy.
"There! I think I will let it go at that. Old Rickenbeck don't amount to much, anyhow. We'll let him go."
"All right," said the
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