"Patchwork and imagination," returned the other wearily. "That's what I get special rates for. Now, if I'd had your chance, right there on the spot, with the whole stage-setting around one--Lordy! How a fellow could write that!" "Not so easy," murmured the agent. "You get confused. It's a sort of blur, and when you come to put it down, little things that aren't really important come up to the surface--" "Put it down?" queried the other with a quick look. "Oh, I see. Your report for the company." "Well, I wasn't thinking of that." "Do you write other things?" asked the reporter carelessly. "Oh, just foolery." The tone invited--at least it did not discourage--further inquiry. Mr. Gardner was bored. Amateurs who "occasionally write" were the bane of him who, having a signature of his own in the leading local paper, represented to the aspiring mind the gilded and lofty peaks of the unattainable. However he must play this youth as a source of material. "Ever try for the papers?" "Not yet. I've thought maybe I might get a chance sometime as a sort of local correspondent around here," was the diffident reply. Gardner repressed a grin. Manzanita would hardly qualify as a news center. Diplomacy prompted him to state vaguely that there was always a chance for good stuff locally. "On a big story like this," he added, "of course there'd be nothing doing except for the special man sent out to cover it." "No. Well, I didn't write my--what I wrote, with any idea of getting it printed." The newspaper man sighed wearily, sighed like a child and lied like a man of duty. "I'd like to see it." Without a trace of hesitation or self-consciousness Banneker said, "All right," and, taking his composition from its docket, motioned the other to the light. Mr. Gardner finished and turned the first sheet before making any observation. Then he bent a queer look upon Banneker and grunted: "What do you call this stuff, anyway?" "Just putting down what I saw." Gardner read on. "What about this, about a Pullman sleeper 'elegant as a hotel bar and rigid as a church pew'? Where do you get that?" Banneker looked startled. "I don't know. It just struck me that is the way a Pullman is." "Well, it is," admitted the visitor, and continued to read. "And this guy with the smashed finger that kept threatening to 'soom'; is that right?" "Of course it's right. You don't think I'd make it up! That reminds me of something." And he entered a memo to see the litigious-minded complainant again, for these are the cases which often turn up in the courts with claims for fifty-thousand-dollar damages and heartrending details of all-but-mortal internal injuries. Silence held the reader until he had concluded the seventh and last sheet. Not looking at Banneker, he said: "So that's your notion of reporting the wreck of the swellest train that crosses the continent, is it?" "It doesn't pretend to be a report," disclaimed the writer. "It's pretty bad, is it?"