From "Sis" Hopkins, legislative reporter of the _Post_, the news went skipping over the telephone wire to the editorial rooms, where the assistant editor, who received it, remarked that he was sorry to hear it. That done, the assistant hung up the receiver, and resumed work upon an article entitled "A Constitution for Turkey?" He had hardly added a sentence to this composition before West came in and, with a cheery word of greeting, passed into his own office. The assistant editor went on with his writing. He looked worn this morning, Henry Surface's son, and not without reason. Half the night he had shared the nurse's vigil at the bedside of Surface, who lay in unbroken stupor. Half the night he had maintained an individual vigil in his own room, lying flat on his back and staring wide-eyed into the darkness. And on the heels of the day, there had come new trouble for him, real trouble, though in the general cataclysm its full bearings and farther reaches did not at once come home to him. Running professionally through the _Post_ at breakfast-time, his eye, like Miss Weyland's, had been suddenly riveted by that paper's remarks upon the reformatory.... What was the meaning of the staggering performance he had no idea, and need not inquire. Its immediate effect upon his own career was at least too plain for argument. His editorship and his reformatory had gone down together. Yet he was in no hurry now about following West into his sanctum. Of all things Queed, as people called him, despised heroics and abhorred a "scene." Nothing could be gained by a quarrel now; very earnestly he desired the interview to be as matter-of-fact as possible. In half an hour, when he had come to a convenient stopping-place, he opened the door and stood uncomfortably before the young man he had so long admired. West, sitting behind his long table, skimming busily through the paper with blue pencil and scissors, looked up with his agreeable smile. "Well! What do you see that looks likely for--What's the matter? Are you sick to-day?" "No, I am quite well, thank you. I find very little in the news, though. You notice that a digest of the railroad bill is given out?" "Yes. You don't look a bit well, old fellow. You must take a holiday after the legislature goes. Yes, I'm going to take the hide off that bill. Or better yet--you. Don't you feel like shooting off some big guns at it?" "Certainly, if you want me to. There is the farmers' convention, too. And by the way, I'd like to leave as soon as you can fill my place." West dropped scissors, pencil, and paper and stared at him with dismayed amazement. "_Leave!_ Why, you are never thinking of _leaving_ me!" "Yes. I'd--like to leave. I thought I ought to tell you this morning, so that you can at once make your plans as to my successor."