Under the fear of death Miller had made a promise of restitution, but in an unguarded moment he said he “would make a new will.” Slim demanded what he meant by a new will, and the uncle had confessed the will to the Watsons merely to cheat the nephew in case he had come back and fulfilled his courtroom threat. The uncle had kept count and knew to a day when Slim was to be released. Enraged beyond endurance at that, Slim had seized up the hammer and crushed the old man’s head. “But as I live,” he breathed hoarsely, “the man was as good as dead before I hit him.” “Yes,” Lanagan interrupted, “I know that, Slim.” Slim looked at Lanagan with dull curiosity, but was too far gone to ask explanations, and he continued with his story, telling of sprinkling kerosene and touching it with a match. He then had gone to the Watson cottage, carrying the hammer, intending if the couple were not in to locate and destroy the will; and if they were to do double murder if necessary to get it. Miller had said they had it, an untruth, told evidently in the childish hope that Slim might leave him and search for it. While still waiting for an opportunity of entering the house, the smouldering fire had been discovered at the Miller cottage, and he had fled, the thought coming to him to leave the hammer on the Watson porch, not knowing the hammer belonged to them and had been borrowed by Miller. The arrest of the two for murder might pave the way for him to have his property restored as the next of kin to Miller. He signed the confession laboriously, and the story was done. “It’s all right, cull,” he said to Brady, dropping back to the vernacular. “You did me a good trick not sending me back. There ain’t no hard feelings on my part.” He raised himself by a sudden effort, his eyes peering far, far away and beyond the sordid scene of his dissolution. “I squared--all--accounts--dad--I squ’--” He dropped back on the pillow. The surgeon bent his head to Slim’s breast, then slowly straightened up and drew the sheet over his face. “Poor lad!” said Lanagan softly. “They will judge you differently there!” Then again the newspaper mind curtly: “Brady, you and Wilson stay here until I come back. Nobody gets in. Nobody, understand? Doc, we’ll have to impound you, too, until three. Understand, Brady?” Brady nodded. “Now, Norrie,” snapped Lanagan incisively, “beat it, boy, beat it!” For two hours Lanagan and I fed paper into our typewriters, with Sampson himself whisking the sheets away as they came from the platens. The M. E. even came in once or twice and tried to preserve his dignity while he scanned the copy hot from the typewriter. The thrill of Lanagan’s great exclusive was throughout the entire plant. Not a half-dozen people in the office knew just what the story was, but each knew by the subtle instinct of communication that the big scoop of the year was shooting down the pneumatic to the composing room.