He gave a gasp of consternation when he saw that it was half-past two, and that there was but ten minutes left to him. This, and the many electric lights and the sight of the familiar pile of buildings, startled him into a semi-consciousness of where he was and how great was the necessity for haste. He rose in his seat and called on the horse, and urged it into a reckless gallop over the slippery asphalt. He considered nothing else but speed, and looking neither to the left nor right dashed off down Broad Street into Chestnut, where his course lay straight away to the office, now only seven blocks distant. Gallegher never knew how it began, but he was suddenly assaulted by shouts on either side, his horse was thrown back on its haunches, and he found two men in cabmen's livery hanging at its head, and patting its sides, and calling it by name. And the other cabmen who have their stand at the corner were swarming about the carriage, all of them talking and swearing at once, and gesticulating wildly with their whips. They said they knew the cab was McGovern's, and they wanted to know where he was, and why he wasn't on it; they wanted to know where Gallegher had stolen it, and why he had been such a fool as to drive it into the arms of its owner's friends; they said that it was about time that a cab-driver could get off his box to take a drink without having his cab run away with, and some of them called loudly for a policeman to take the young thief in charge. Gallegher felt as if he had been suddenly dragged into consciousness out of a bad dream, and stood for a second like a half-awakened somnambulist. They had stopped the cab under an electric light, and its glare shone coldly down upon the trampled snow and the faces of the men around. him. Gallegher bent forward, and lashed savagely at the horse with his whip. "Let me go," he shouted, as he tugged impotently at the reins. “Let me go, I tell you. I haven't stole no cab, and you've got no right to stop me. I only want to take it to the Press office," he begged. "They'll send it back to you all right. They'll pay you for the trip. I'm not running away with it. The driver's got the collar-he's 'rested—and I'm only a-going to the Press office. Do you hear me?" he cried, his voice rising and breaking in a shriek of passion and disappointment. "I tell you to let go those reins. Let me go, or I'll kill you. Do you hear me? I'll kill you." And leaning forward, the boy struck savagely with his long whip at the faces of the men about the horse's head. Some one in the crowd reached up and caught him by the ankles, and with a quick jerk pulled him off the box, and threw him on to the street. But he was up on his knees in a moment, and caught at the man's head. "Don't let them stop me, mister," he cried, "please let me go. I didn't steal the cab, sir. S'help me, I didn't. I'm telling you the truth. Take me to the Press office, and they'll prove it to you. They'll pay you anything you ask 'em. It's only such a little ways now, and I've come so far, sir. Please don't let them stop me," he sobbed, clasping the man about the knees. "For Heaven's sake, mister, let me go!" The managing editor of the Press took up the india-rubber speakingtube at his side, and answered, "Not yet" to an inquiry the night editor had already put to him five times within the last twenty minutes. Then he snapped the metal top of the tube impatiently, and went up-stairs. As he passed the door of the local room, he noticed that the reporters had not gone home, but were sitting about on the tables. and chairs, waiting. They looked up inquiringly as he passed, and the city editor asked, "Any news yet?" and the managing editor shook his head. The compositors were standing idle in the composing-room, and their foreman was talking with the night editor. "Well," said that gentleman, tentatively. "Well," returned the managing editor, "I don't think we can wait; do you?" "It's a half-hour after time now," said the night editor, "and we'll miss the suburban trains if we hold the paper back any longer. We can't afford to wait for a purely hypothetical story. The chances are all against the fight's having taken place or this Hade's having been arrested." "But if we're beaten on it-"suggested the chief. "But I don't think that is possible. If there were any story to print, Dwyer would have had it here before now." The managing editor looked steadily down at the floor. "Very well," he said, slowly, "we won't wait any longer. Go ahead," he added, turning to the foreman with a sigh of reluctance. The foreman whirled himself about, and began to give his orders; but the two editors still looked at each other doubtfully. As they stood so, there came a sudden shout and the sound of people running to and fro in the reportorial rooms below. There was the tramp of many footsteps on the stairs, and above the confusion they heard the voice of the city editor telling some one to "run to Madden's and get some brandy, quick." No one in the composing-room said anything; but those compositors who had started to go home began slipping off their overcoats, and every one stood with his eyes fixed on the door. It was kicked open from the outside, and in the doorway stood a cab-driver and the city editor, supporting between them a pitiful little figure of a boy, wet and miserable, and with the snow melting on his clothes and running in little pools to the floor. "Why, it's Gallegher,” said the night editor, in a tone of the keenest disappointment. Gallegher shook himself free from his supporters, and took an unsteady step forward, his fingers fumbling stiffly with the buttons of his waistcoat. "Mr. Dwyer, sir," he began faintly, with his eyes fixed fearfully on the managing editor, "he got arrested-and I couldn't get here no sooner, 'cause they kept a-stopping me, and they took me cab from under me— but-" he pulled the notebook from his breast and held it out with its covers damp and limp from the rain, "but we got Hade, and here's Mr. Dwyer's copy." And then he asked, with a queer note in his voice, partly of dread and partly of hope, "Am I in time, sir?" The managing editor took the book, and tossed it to the foreman, who ripped out its leaves and dealt them out to his men as rapidly as a gambler deals out cards. Then the managing editor stooped and picked Gallegher up in his arms, and, sitting down, began to unlace his wet and muddy shoes. Gallegher made a faint effort to resist this degradation of the managerial dignity; but his protest was a very feeble one, and his head fell back heavily on the managing editor's shoulder. To Gallegher the incandescent lights began to whirl about in circles, and to burn in different colors; the faces of the reporters kneeling before him and chafing his hands and feet grew dim and unfamiliar, and the roar and rumble of the great presses in the basement sounded far away, like the murmur of the sea. And then the place and the circumstances of it came back to him again sharply and with sudden vividness. Gallegher looked up, with a faint smile, into the managing editor's face. "You won't turn me off for running away, will you?" he whispered. The managing editor did not answer immediately. His head was bent, and he was thinking, for some reason or other, of a little boy of his own, at home in bed. Then he said, quietly, "Not this time, Gallegher." Gallegher's head sank back comfortably on the older man's shoulder, and he smiled comprehensively at the faces of the young men crowded around him. "You hadn't ought to," he said, with a touch of his old impudence, "'cause I beat the town." The Sailor-Man I LIKE the look of khaki and the cut of army wear, And the men of mettle sporting it, at home and over there; But there's something at the heartstrings that tautens when I meet A blue-clad sailor-man adrift, on shoreleave from the fleet. From flapping togs his sea-legs win some rhythm of old romance For what were all the soldiers worth There's sunlight now and steady ground Speed well this visitor, whose home. His comrades these; his foe is ours, the The stealthy, murdering German "fish," His hands are often cruel cold; his heart For in its depths he knows 'tis he that shields the world from harm; Because I know it too, my heart beats warmer when I meet A blue-clad sailor-man adrift, on shoreleave from the fleet. December, 1917. FINLEY PETER DUNNE Rudyard Kipling "I THINK," said Mr. Dooley, "th' finest pothry in th' wurruld is wrote be that frind iv young Hogan's, a man be th' name iv Roodyard Kipling. I see his pomes in th' pa-aper, Hinnissy; an' they're all right. They're all right, thim pomes. They was wan about scraggin' Danny Deever that done me a wurruld iv good. They was a la-ad I wanst knew be th' name iv Deever, an' like as not he was th' same man. He owed me money. Thin there was wan that I see mintioned in th' war news wanst in a while, th' less we f'rget, th' more we raymimber. That was a hot pome an' a good wan. What I like about Kipling is that his pomes is right off th' bat, like me con-versations with you, me boy. He's a minyitman, a r-ready pote that sleeps like th' dhriver iv thruck 9, with his poetic pants in his boots beside his bed, an' him r-ready to jump out an' slide down th' pole th' minyit th' alarm sounds. "He's not such a pote as Tim Scanlan, that hasn't done annything since th' siege iv Lim'rick; an' that was two hundherd year befure he was bor-rn. He's prisident iv th' Pome Supply Company,-fr-resh pothry delivered ivry day at ye'er dure. Is there an accident in a grain illyvator? Ye pick up ye'er mornin' pa-aper, an' they'se a pome about it be Roodyard Kipling. Do ye hear iv a manhole cover bein' |