up the aisle men reached out and shook hands with him. Some of them dropped money into the hat brimming with bills and coins that he still held in his hand. He filled his pockets with the money and handed the hat to Murphy to be returned to that prince of men, Charlie Murray.

         *         *         *         *         *

With the money given him by the crowd, the $20 bill Battling Rodriguez added to it and the $50 he received as the loser's end of the purse in his bout, he had more than $625 as he boarded the car from Vernon to the city to return home. His happiness was dimmed, however, by the thought of facing his mother, who, he knew, would be waiting up for him.

When he transferred at Seventh and Spring streets and boarded another car a woman gasped at the sight of his face. Murphy had used every trick known to a professional second to doctor his battered features, but nothing could hide the swollen lips, the cut over his eye and the eye that was puffed so that there was only a thin slit between the lids to see through.

He decided that it would be easier upon his mother for him to tell her everything. Then it would be over and done with. She would not worry then as she would if he told her some impossible story.

She was in her chair in the living room when he returned home. He threw himself at her feet.

"Mother," he said, "please."

"My boy," she said, waiting for him to lift his face from her lap.

He felt he could not raise his head. They sat silent for a while and then she put her hands on each side of his head and lifted his face to hers. He shut his eyes. He could not stand to see her look as she saw his condition.

He waited, his battered face upturned. It seemed hours that she held his face, without a word. Then she leaned forward and her lips touched his forehead gently in a kiss.

"My boy," she said and her arms went around his neck.

They rose at last and she bathed his wounds, smiling through her tears. When he kissed her goodnight she whispered again, "My boy." He knew he was forgiven and he went to his room thinking of the adventure waiting for him in the morning when he would meet Morton and begin work in a newspaper office.

         *         *         *         *         *

He was bewildered when he entered the editorial department of the afternoon newspaper of which Morton was sporting editor. Never had he seen such a busy place.

Telegraph instruments and typewriters clicked and clattered incessantly. Although it was broad day outside, electric lights burned brightly over desks. The floor was covered with discarded newspapers and scraps and balls of copy paper.

Men and boys hurried from desk to desk, back and forth, in and out of swinging doors. As he watched them, wondering if they really knew what they were doing themselves, they reminded him of ants around an ant hill. He was thrilled by the life and energy of the place, the speed and earnestness of the workers.

At a flat-topped desk over which was a sign with the words "City Editor" sat a fat, bald-headed man wearing a green eye-shade, who spoke over his shoulder to a younger man at another desk close to his. This younger man wore a telephone headgear, receivers over both ears, and punched at the typewriter before him with the first finger of each hand. John saw he was writing what someone was dictating to him over the telephone.

"T, like in Thomas; I like in Isaac; P like in Peter," the man with the headgear shouted into the mouthpiece of an extension close to his face.

John tried to fathom what the man with the headgear was talking about and it finally dawned on him that he was making certain of the spelling of the word "tip," dictated to him, by repeating the letters as they appeared in other words.

He caught sight of Morton at a desk on the far side of the big, high-ceilinged room and crossed over, weaving his way through a labyrinth of desks, chairs and tables. Morton, who had been glancing over a newspaper, looked up as he approached.

"Well, if it isn't the Gallant kid!" he exclaimed. "I'd almost forgotten all about you. Sit down."

John sat down while Morton questioned him. No, he had never done any writing except a little for his school paper. Yes, he'd like to start in as a reporter. It didn't make much difference how much he was paid as long as he could get started.

"All right, then," said Morton, rising. "We'll go over and see P. Q., but don't you ever blame him for getting you started in this game."

The sporting editor led him to the fat, bald-headed man with the green eye-shade.

"P. Q.," he said.

The city editor looked up.

"Here's the young fellow I was telling you about this morning; name's John Gallant."

"P. Q."—John afterward learned that those were his initials, uniquely symbolical of his perpetual order to reporters to be "pretty quick" in their work—looked at the marks on John's face left by the fists of Battling Rodriguez.

"Fighting face, all right," he said. "Well, suppose you go to work."

He reached back to his desk and brought up a handful of clippings from a newspaper from which he selected a few short ones.

"Grab a typewriter and rewrite these," he said, handing the clippings to John. "Keep 'em short. Twenty-five words each. Remember that always. Keep everything short. Keep your eyes and ears open and read the papers. Read everything in them. Now get over there and start writing and I'll call you when I need you."

John knew that as long as he lived he would never forget that first day in newspaper work. He rewrote the clippings carefully, counting the words to make certain that they did not exceed the twenty-five ordered by P. Q. He had done some typewriting at school and practiced more by filling page after page of copy paper with the old favorite beginner's sentence, "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party," and its twin, "The quick, brown fox jumped over the lazy dog."

He watched in open-mouthed wonder at the speed with which the other reporters—he counted himself one of them—wrote their stories. He learned that everything written for a newspaper is a "story," everything from a three-line item about a meeting of the Colorado State society to a banner-line murder.

He was fascinated by a reporter whom P. Q. called Brennan and who worked at a typewriter close to where he was sitting. Brennan, thin-faced, about thirty, John judged, turned out page after page of typewritten copy, stopping at the completion of each page to throw back his head and shout: "Boy! Oh, BOY!" at the ceiling. In response to this call a copy boy appeared and carried the page to P. Q. As he worked he smoked cigarettes, lighting each fresh one from the stub of the one that preceded it. These cigarettes he carefully stood on end on the desk as his fingers pounded at the typewriter.

When he took a deep inhalation of tobacco smoke during his writing Brennan paused and gazed, dreamy-eyed, out into space. Then suddenly, he stood his cigarette on end again and attacked the typewriter keys furiously. John noticed that Brennan, like the man with the headgear, used only one finger of each hand in typewriting.

Along in the afternoon, when he had stopped hammering at his machine, he turned to find John staring at him. Stretching out his arms, yawning, he asked:

"New man?"

John said he was.

"First time?"

John said it was.

From Brennan, John learned many things. He learned that P. Q. had an unswerving prejudice against