"Gykeman, eh?" Mr. Foxman considered a moment. This news of McManus' indisposition pleased him. It showed how willing was Fate to keep on dealing him the winning cards. But Gykeman wasn't his choice for the task he had in mind; that called for someone of a less inquiring, less curious mind than Gykeman owned. Again his eye ranged the city room. It fell on a swollen and dissipated face, purplish under the electric lights. "I believe you'd better bring Gykeman back downstairs," he said, "I want him to read copy on that Wilder poisoning case that's going to trial to-morrow in General Sessions. Let's see." He went through the pretense of canvassing the available material in sight. Then: "Hemburg will do. Put Hemburg on make-up until Mac is well again." "Hemburg?" The city editor's eyebrows arched in surprise. "I thought you didn't think very highly of Hemburg, Mr. Foxman." "Hemburg's all right," said Mr. Foxman crisply; "it's his personal habits I don't fancy very much. Still, with half a load on Hemburg is capable enough--and I never saw him with less than half a load on. He can handle the make-up; he used to be make-up man years ago on the old _Star-Ledger_, it seems to me. Put him on instead of Gykeman--no, never mind; send him in here to me. I'll tell him myself and give him some good advice at the same time." "Well, just as you think best," said Sloan, miffed that his own selection should have been rejected, but schooled to an unquestioning obedience by the seemingly slack--but really rigorous--discipline of a newspaper shop. "I'll send him right in." Two minutes later Hemburg was standing in an attitude of attention alongside Mr. Foxman's desk, and from his chair Mr. Foxman was looking up at him steadily. "Hemburg," he stated, "I can't say that I've been altogether pleased with you here of late." Hemburg put up a splotched, tremulous hand, to hide a weak mouth, and spoke in his own defence from between his fingers. "Well, I'm sorry if anything has gone wrong, Mr. Foxman," he began; "I try----" "I don't mean there's any particular complaint," stated Mr. Foxman, "only it struck me you've been getting into a rut lately. Or that you've been going stale--let's put it that way. On my own judgment I've given orders that you are to go on make-up temporarily, beginning to-night. It's up to you to make good there. If you do make good, when McManus comes back I'll look round and see if there isn't something better than a forty-dollar-a-week copy-reading job for you in this office." "I'm--I'm certainly obliged to you, Mr. Foxman," stuttered Hemburg. "I guess maybe I was getting logy. A fellow certainly does get in a groove out there on that copy desk," he added with the instinct of the inebriate to put the blame for his shortcomings on anything rather than on the real cause of those shortcomings.