been visitin' you for 'most a year, snug and cozy; but I guess this is the end of your troubles."

Miss Watts walked out into the rain and, taking a policeman's electric bull's-eye, looked at the prisoners one by one. I followed her and looked, too, while the real reporter talked to Mr. Conroy. There were three counterfeiters, and they were all handcuffed and looked young. It could not have been very hard for six policemen to take them. One of them had blood on his face, and another was covered with mud, as if he had been rolled in it. Miss Watts asked the bloody one, who was also the biggest one, if his gang had really worked in a secret cellar at Ferncliff for a year. He said it had been there about ten months.

"Then you were there all winter?" Miss Watts asked him. "And you were so safe and comfortable that when the tenants moved in and you found they were all women, except a stupid butler, you decided to scare them away and stay right along?"

The man muttered something that seemed to mean that she was right. The real reporter interrupted, looking busy and worried again. "Miss Watts," he said, quickly, "can't we go right into your house and send this story to the Searchlight over your telephone? It's a quarter to one, and there isn't a minute to lose. The Searchlight goes to press in an hour. I've got all the facts," he added, in a peaceful tone.

Miss Watts said we could, and led the way into the house, while the counterfeiters and the police tramped off through the mud and rain. When we got inside, Miss Watts took us to the library and lit the electric lights, while the real reporter bustled about, looking busier than any one I ever saw before. I watched him for a minute. Then I told Miss Watts I wanted to go into a quiet room and write my story. She and the real reporter looked at each other again. I was getting tired of their looks. The real reporter spoke to me very kindly, like a Sunday-school superintendent addressing his class.

"Now, see here, Miss Iverson," he said; "you've had a big, new experience and lots of excitement. You discovered the counterfeiters. You'll get full credit for it. Let it go at that, and I'll write the story. It's got to be a real story, not a kindergarten special."

If he hadn't said that about the kindergarten special I might have let him write the story, for I was cold and tired and scared. But at those fatal words I felt myself stiffen all over.

"It's my story," I said, with icy determination. "And I'm going to write it."

The real reporter looked annoyed. "But can you?" he protested. "We haven't time for experiments."

"Of course I can," I said. And I'm afraid I spoke crossly, for I was getting annoyed. "I'll write it exactly the way Sister Irmingarde told me to."

I sat down at the table as I spoke. I heard a bump and something that sounded like a groan. The real reporter had fallen into a chair. "Good Lord!" he said; and then for a long time he didn't say anything. Finally he began to fuss with his paper, as if he meant to write the story anyway. I wrote three pages and forgot about him. At last he muttered, "Here, let me see those," and his voice sounded like a dove's when it mourns under the eaves. I pushed the sheets toward him with my left hand and went on writing. Suddenly I heard a gasp and a chuckle. In another second the real reporter was standing beside me, grinning his widest grin.

"Why, say, you little May Iverson kid," he almost shouted, "this story is going to be good!"

I could hear Miss Watts straighten up in the chair from which she was watching us. She snatched at my pages, and he let her have them. I wanted to draw myself up to my full height and look at him coldly, but I didn't—there wasn't time. Besides, far down inside of me I was delighted by his praise.

"Of course it's going to be good," was all I said. "Sister Irmingarde told me to write about things as they are, and very simply."

He had my pages back in his hands now and was running over them quickly, putting in a few words here and there with a pencil. I could see he was not changing much. Then he started on a jump for the next room, where the telephone was, but stopped at the door. There was a queer look in his eyes.

"Sister Irmingarde's a daisy!" he muttered.

Then I heard him calling New York. "Gimme the Searchlight," he called. "Gimme the city desk. Hurry up! Say, Jack, this is Gibson, at Sound View. We've got a crackerjack of a story out here. No—the Iverson kid is doing it. It's all right, too. Get Hammond busy there and let him take it on the typewriter as fast as I read it. Ready? Here goes."

He began to read my first page.

Miss Watts got up and shut the door, and I bowed my thanks to her. The storm was worse than ever, but I hardly heard it. For a second his words had made me think of Sister Irmingarde. I felt sorry for her. She would never have a chance like this—to write a real news story for a great newspaper. The convent seemed like a place I had heard of, long ago.

Then I settled down to work, and for the next hour there was no sound in the room but the whisper of my busy pen and the respectful footsteps of Miss Watts as she reverently carried my story, page by page, to the chastened "real reporter."

II
THE CRY OF THE PACK

Mr. Nestor Hurd, our "feature" editor, was in a bad humor. We all knew he was, and everybody knew why, except Mr. Nestor Hurd himself. He thought it was because he had not a competent writer on his whole dash-blinged staff, and he was explaining this to space in words that stung like active gnats. Really it was because his wife had just called at his office and drawn his month's salary in advance to go to Atlantic City.

Over the little partition that separated his private office from the square pen where his reporters had their desks Mr. Hurd's words flew and lit upon us. Occasionally we heard the murmur of Mr. Morris's voice, patting the air like a soothing hand; and at last our chief got tired and stopped, and an office boy came into the outer room and said he wanted to see me.

I went in with steady knees. I was no longer afraid of Mr. Hurd. I had been on the Searchlight a whole week, and I had written one big "story" and three small ones, and they had all been printed. I knew my style was improving every day—growing more mature. I had dropped a great many amateur expressions, and I had learned to stop when I reached the end of my story instead of going right on. Besides, I was no longer the newest of the "cub reporters." The latest one had been taken on that morning—a scared-looking girl who told me in a trembling voice that she had to write a special column every day for women. It was plain that she had not studied life as we girls had in the convent. She made me feel a thousand years old instead of only eighteen. I had received so much advice during the week that some of it was spilling over, and I freely and gladly gave the surplus to her. I had a desk, too, by this time, in a corner near a window where I could look out on City Hall Park and see the newsboys stealing baths in the fountain. And I was going to be a nun in three years, so who cared, anyway? I went to Mr. Hurd with my head high and the light of confidence in my eyes.

"'S that?" remarked Mr. Hurd, when he heard my soft footfalls approaching his desk. He was too busy to look up and see. He was bending over a great heap of newspaper clippings, and the veins bulged out on his brow from the violence of his mental efforts. Mr. Morris, the thin young editor who had a desk near his, told him it was Miss Iverson. Mr. Morris had a muscular