"Where's that check I sent you?" "Here it is." The youth handed it to him. "Make a mistake?" "I certainly did." Burns tore up the check before saying, "Now you get out, you bum, and stay out, or take the consequences." "Get out? What for?" "You know what for." Burns was quivering with rage. "You ran a good bluff and you nearly put it over; but I don't want to advertise myself as a jackass, so I shan't have you pinched unless you come back." "Come back? I intend to stay. What's the matter?" "I had an idea you were fourflushing," stormed the editor, "so I went down to the G.T. depot myself. There's no trunk of the sort there; Corrigan never saw you or anybody like you. Say, why didn't you walk out when you got that check? What made you come back?" Anderson began to laugh softly. "Good old Corrigan! He's all right, isn't he? Well, he gets half of that check when you rewrite it, if I don't laugh myself to death before I get to the bank." "What d'you mean?" Burns was impressed by the other's confidence. "Nothing, except that I've found one square man in this village. One square guy is a pretty big percentage in a town the size of Buffalo. Corrigan wouldn't let you see the depot if I wasn't along. Put on your coat and come with me--yes, and bring a couple of hired men if it will make you feel any better." At the depot he called the baggage-master to him, and said: "Mr. Corrigan, this is Mr. Burns, the city editor of _The Intelligencer_." "That's what he told me," grinned the Irishman, utterly ignoring the young editor; "but you didn't give him no references, and I wouldn't take a chance." Burns maintained a dignified silence; he said little even when the contents of the trunk were displayed to him. Nor did he open his mouth on the way back to the office. But when he was seated at his desk and had read Anderson's copy he spoke. "This is the rottenest story ever turned in at this office," said he. "I know it is," Paul agreed, frankly, then explained his difficulty in writing it. "I'll do it myself," Burns told him. "Now, you go home and report to-morrow." A very tired but a very happy young man routed out the landlady of a cheap boarding-house that night and hugged her like a bear, explaining joyously that he had done a great big thing. He waltzed her down the hall and back, while she clutched wildly at her flapping flannel wrapper and besought him to think of her other boarders. He waltzed her out of her bedroom slippers, gave her a smacking big kiss on her wrinkled cheek, then left her, breathless and scandalized, but all aflutter. The city had read the story when Anderson awoke the next morning, for _The Intelligencer_ had made a clean "beat," and Burns had played up the story tremendously, hence it was with jumping pulses that Paul scanned the front page of that journal. The further he read, however, the greater grew his indignation.