“It won't be this scramble to 'fill up' much longer. I have plans, gentlemen,” she cried, “and before long we will print news. And we must buy 'plate matter' instead of 'patent insides'; and I had a talk with the Associated Press people in Rouen--but that's for afterwhile. And I went to the hospital this morning before I left. They wouldn't let me see him again, but they told me all about him, and he's better; and I got Tom to go to the jail--he was so mystified, he doesn't know what I wanted it for--and he saw some of those beasts, and I can do a column of description besides an editorial about them, and I will be fierce enough to suit Carlow, you may believe that. And I've been talking to Senator Burns--that is, listening to Senator Burns, which is much stupider--and I think I can do an article on national politics. I'm not very well up on local issues yet, but I--” She broke off suddenly. “There! I think we can get out to-morrow's number without any trouble. By the time you get back from the hotel, father, I'll have half my stuff written--'written up,' I mean. Take your big umbrella and go, dear, and please ask at the express office if my typewriter has come.” She laughed again with sheer delight, like a child, and ran to the corner and got the cotton umbrella and placed it in the old man's hand. As he reached the door, she called after him: “Wait!” and went to him and knelt before him, and, with the humblest, proudest grace in the world, turned up his trousers to keep them from the mud. Ross Schofield had never considered Mr. Fisbee a particularly sacred sort of person, but he did from that moment. The old man made some timid protest, at his daughter's action, But she answered; “The great ladies used to buckle the Chevalier Bayard's spurs for him, and you're a great deal nicer than the Chev----_You haven't any rubbers_! I don't believe _any_ of you have any rubbers!” And not until both Fisbee and Mr. Schofield had promised to purchase overshoes at once, and in the meantime not to step in any puddles, would she let her father depart upon his errand. He crossed the Square with the strangest, jauntiest step ever seen in Plattville. Solomon Tibbs had a warm argument with Miss Selina as to his identity. Miss Selina maintaining that the figure under the big umbrella--only the legs and coat-tails were visible to them--was that of a stranger, probably an Englishman. In the “Herald” office the editor turned, smiling, to the paper's remaining vassal. “Mr. Schofield, I heard some talk in Rouen of an oil company that had been formed to prospect for kerosene in Carlow County. Do you know anything about it?” Ross, surfeited with honor, terror, and possessed by a sweet distress at finding himself tete-a-tete with the lady, looked at the wall and replied: “Oh, it's that Eph Watts's foolishness.” “Do you know if they have begun to dig for it yet?” “Ma'am?” said Ross. “Have they begun the diggings yet?”