Ned saw the haggard change in his face as he turned. He was going out empty-handed, with a dying wife and four small girls, to meet the cold, hard, tight-fisted, grinding world. Ned knew how cold, how hard, how tight-fisted, how grinding that world is! "Say!" he screamed suddenly, throwing himself upon Bob Platt, "I done it! I done it! I done it, myself. If they hang me for it I can't hide it! I burnt the copy an' distributed the type of that editorial, an' fixed the purspectus in its place"--he remembered how awfully it looked--"as well as I could." The champion concluded with a sob. Bob Platt stood for a moment staring, motionless. "You Black-eyed Bamboozler of Beelzebub!" he exclaimed, with an unconscious alliterative habit contracted from the corrupting influence of headlines. He might have been expected to fall on the self-accuser's neck for joy. He did nothing of the sort. He clutched Ned by the nape of that structure, and the doughty devil's feet hardly touched the floor once in the rapid transit to the "rinktum." "Here's this Imp of Iniquity," cried the foreman indignantly, "who says that he distributed the type and canceled the copy and set up that prospectus on purpose!" "What on earth"--they mentioned a different region--"did you do it for?" rose the editorial chorus. "'Cause," sobbed the champion censor of the press, "I didn't want that copee ter be printed. 'T warn't true!" There was a short silence. The conclave of editors stood aghast at the idea of printing truth only! The managing editor was the first to recover his faculties. "You are the boy who was arrested about this affair of Gorham's Theatre, I believe?" he said. "Yes, sir," sobbed Ned. "An' Mr. Gorham never had no more to do with burnin' that theaytre than I had. 'T was ter _spite him_ it was burned." "Then you know who did burn it?" The managing editor had fairly cornered Ned, but the obstinate boy refused to reply. For a time threats and persuasions were alike useless. Only by strongly representing to him that Gorham would be ruined unless the matter were cleared up was the truth sifted out little by little.