"Is it true, Ellis? Bill said that Flossy would--would----" He gulped. He could not finish. Ellis turned suddenly and sat down at the table and buried his face in the pile of exchanges. His body shook with the effort to suppress his emotion. Bill slipped down from his stool and the two awkward, ungainly youths looked at each other in embarrassed sorrow. Finally Jap laid an inky hand on Ellis's shoulder. "Tell her--tell her," he stuttered, "that Bill and me are--are a--prayin'." Ellis gave a mighty sob and rushed away, bare-headed. The two apprentices sat at their cases, the tears wetting the type in their sticks. The long day dragged by. Neither of them remembered noon, but plodded stolidly and silently through the clippings on their copy hooks. It was growing dusk when a great commotion arose. It seemed to come from the corner near Blanke's drug store. It gathered force as it neared Granger's bank, Now it had reached the mouth of the alley that separated the bank from the _Herald_ office. There was cheering and laughter. Jap's face hardened. He slung one leg to the floor. How dared any one cheer or laugh, when Flossy lay dying? In another instant Ellis burst into the room. His dark locks were rumpled, his eyes wild and bright. "Get out all the roosters--and the stallions, too!" he shouted. "Open a can of vermilion and, in long pica, double-lead it: 'It is a boy!'" Jap let the other leg fall and dragged himself around. His mouth had fallen loose on its hinges. He sat down on the floor and gaped foolishly at Ellis. "She's feeling fine," babbled Ellis, "and you and Bill are coming in the morning to see the boy." He rushed out again. Jap looked at Billy glued to the stool, holding in one paralyzed hand the inverted stick. "Gee!" said Jap. In the morning they tiptoed into Flossy's room. Very pale and weak was the energetic little woman who had taken the moulding of their destinies into her hands. She smiled gently and, as mothers have done since time was, she tenderly drew back the covers from a tiny black head and motioned for the two to look. "Our boy," she said, smiling radiantly. "I am going to name him Jasper William, and I want you to make him very proud of the men he was named for." The hot tears sprang to Jap's eyes and fell upon the little red face. The wee mite, perhaps prompted by an angel whisper from the land from whence he came, threw aloft one wrinkled hand and touched him on the cheek. Sobbing stormily, Jap hid his face in the covers as he knelt beside the bed. Then he took the little fingers in his. "If God lets me live, Flossy, I will make him proud of me." He choked and dashed outside to join Bill, who was snubbing [Transcriber's note: "snubbing" is what's in the source book. Perhaps the author meant "snuffling" or "sobbing".] audibly on the back steps. After a muffled silence he said, his eyes growing suddenly bright: