At the end of another hour Dick was in the position that many a young reporter has found himself in to his sorrow. He had lost all his money except a little small change that jingled in his vest pocket, and he felt confused and wretched. There was no money left to take to his mother, not even money to pay his expenses through the week; and over all was the terrible consciousness that he had been drinking and gambling and had disgraced himself. “Never mind, old fellow,” Randall said, slapping him on the shoulder when the game was over. He saw the anguish in Dick’s face and felt sorry for him. “Never mind; you’ve done a beautiful piece of work to-day.” “Yes, I have!” Dick answered with deep sarcasm in his voice; “a beautiful piece of work!” CHAPTER IV. A WILD NIGHT ON NEW YORK BAY. “Simply immense, Sumner!” was the city editor’s greeting when Dick went into the office on the morning after his Sing Sing experience. “‘Open the north switch!’ ha, ha! Nobody else has a line of that. How did you get hold of it?” Dick might have answered that he got it by honest hard work and following up a very slight clew, but he merely said that he stumbled upon it. The pleasure of doing the piece of work in that day’s paper was all gone. His head still ached, and he was thoroughly ashamed of himself. Never before had so many of the good men of the office taken pains to speak to him; never in his life had he received half as many compliments. But he could think of nothing but his shame at the Scribble Club, of his gambling and drinking and losing his money. The money loss was the smallest part of his disgrace, still it troubled him greatly. It was absolutely necessary for him to send money to his mother and to have enough to support him through the week, and he knew of no way to get it. “There must be some way to raise a little money when a fellow is making a fair salary,” he reflected. “Randall will know. He knows how I happen to be without money, and he can tell me what to do.” Randall’s advice to an older man would have been to take his watch to a pawn shop; but when Dick asked it was different. Dick had had little experience of life; he was a boy among men of the world and he had great ability; and all these things helped to make Randall take an interest in him. For there are many worse men in the world than Jack Randall. Generous to a fault, with no one but himself to support, he made money easily and spent it with equal facility, and spent it as readily on a friend as upon himself. “Why, my boy, of course I can tell you what to do,” he said when Dick told him just how he was situated. “It was my fault for letting you play at all, and I ought have known better; but upon my word it was only thoughtlessness on my part. It was not that I wanted to teach you the lively ways of the Scribblers.”