People spent more, drank more, smoked more, went to the music-halls and theatres more, for it was impossible to keep still with such an excitement in the air. See the radiant faces of the ragged street urchins as they shout it out and dispose of their sheets, and are not asked for change of a penny--see the journalistic scouts as they follow the trail, true trail, false trail, any trail--see the crowds in Fleet Street and the Strand and all the narrow thoroughfares leading riverwards--see the smart newspaper carts, with their dapper ponies flying north, south, east, and west with their latest editions--see the travellers on the tops of omnibuses throwing down their coppers and bending over to seize the papers--see the railway bookstalls besieged by eager buyers, who, rushing to catch a train, pick up half a dozen different journals, in the hope of finding in one of them two or three lines of different import from those contained in all the others--see the men standing at street corners, running their eyes down the columns, animated by a similar hope--see the telegraph wires, blind and deaf to human passion, carrying the message of murder, murder, murder, on their hundreds of miles of silent tongues--see the envy of the hawkers of wax matches, penny toys, and bone shirt studs, as they watch the roaring trade that is being done by the busy armies of tag, rag, and bobtail, who form the distributing street agency of journalistic literature, and wish that heaven had sent them such a bit of luck. Sold out again, Jack! Hurrah! Fly off for another quire. As good as a Derby Day, Bill! As good? Ten times better! Where are "all the winners" now? Shorn of their glory they sink into the background, and no small punter so poor to do them reverence? What are "all the winners" to a rattling spicy murder? Never had "The Little Busy Bee" more fully justified its title than on the present occasion. A daring scheme had suggested itself to one of the members of the staff, which had been crowned with success. Ahead of all its rivals it was the first to publish the exciting news, and needless to say it made the most of its golden opportunity. The office was besieged; it was like a Jubilee Day. Men and boys fought and scrambled for the copies as the steam presses belched them forth, and selling them out before they reached the wider thoroughfares, rushed back for more. The day was Saturday, and the whirling tumult lasted till midnight. The manner of "The Little Busy Bee's" buzzing in its preliminary editions was as follows: First, a quotation in large type from "Macbeth." And one cried, "Murder!" Then half a column of the usual sensational headings. Then the account of the daring scheme and the discovery in the following fashion: CHAPTER XXVII. "THE LITTLE BUSY BEE" ENLIGHTENS THE PUBLIC. "Special and exclusive information has just reached us of _A Remarkable and Ghastly Murder_