Taggart sat up. The scoop under the ranger’s fence, cannily selected for his sleeping place, was overhung by branches, and the birds of Hyde Park were at matins already. His watch had gone the way of his other belongings during the last three months, and he could only assume from the meagre light that it was but little after dawn. He was not grateful to the birds; he would be hungry long before a breakfast coming from he hardly knew where. But he listened to them with interest. This was the first night he had passed in the open, and, like all amateurs, he felt a kind of triumph at having achieved vagrancy in spite of the law, the ranger, and the dew. He was a Northumbrian, too, and his ‘tail still up,’ as he expressed it. Born in a town, Taggart had not much country lore--at sparrows, blackbirds, thrushes, his knowledge stopped; but he enjoyed the bobbery the little beggars were kicking up, and, though a trifle stiff perhaps, he felt ‘fine.’ He lit his pipe, and almost at once his brain began to revolve the daily problem of how to get a job, and of why he had lost the one he had. Walking, three months ago, burly, upright, secure and jolly, into the room of his chief at the offices of ‘Conglomerated Journals, Ltd.,’ he had been greeted with: “Morning, Taggart. Georgie Grebe is to give us an article for the _Lighthouse_. He won’t be able to write it, of course. Just do me a column he could sign--something Grebeish. I want a feature of that sort every week now in the _Lighthouse_; got half a dozen really good names. We simply must get it on its legs with the big Public.” Taggart smiled. Georgie Grebe! The name was a household word--tophole idea to get him! “Did he ever write a line in his life, sir?” “Don’t suppose so--but you know the sort of thing he _would_ write; he gets nothing for it but the Ad. The week after I’ve got Sir Cutman Kane--you’ll want to be a bit careful there; but you can get his manner from that book of his on murder trials. He hasn’t got a minute--must have it devilled; but he’ll sign anything decently done. I’m going to _make_ ’em buy the _Lighthouse_, Taggart. Get on to the Grebe article at once, will you.” Taggart nodded, and, drawing from his pocket some typewritten sheets of paper, laid them on the bureau. “Here’s your signed leader, sir; I’ve gingered it a bit too much, perhaps.” “Haven’t time to look at it; got to catch a train.” “Shall I tone it down a little?” “Better perhaps; use your judgment. Sit here, and do it now. Good-bye; back on Friday.” Reaching for his soft hat, assisted into his coat by Taggart, the chief was gone. Taggart sat down to pencil the signed leader. ‘Good leader,’ he thought; ‘pity nobody knows I write ’em!’