He came back, having delivered the goods to the satisfaction of his employers, to find himself promoted to a general supervision of the editorial direction of the papers in his syndicate, with a thumping good salary and a roving commission. He willed it that the first week of his incumbency in his new duties should carry him to Schuylerville. In his old office, which looked much the same as it had looked when he occupied it, he found young Morgan, his former assistant, also looking much the same, barring that now Morgan was in full charge and giving orders instead of taking them. Authority nearly always works a change in a man; it had in this case. “Say, Olcott,” said Morgan after the talk between them had ebbed and flowed along a little while, “you remember that old geezer, Van Nicht, don't you? You know, the old boy who wrote the long piece about his family, and you ran it?” “Certainly I do,” said Olcott. “Why--what of him?” Instead of answering him directly, Morgan put another question: “And of course you remember the old Van Nicht house, under that big, whopping elm tree, out at the end of Putnam Street, where he used to live with those two freakish sisters of his?” “Where he used to live? Doesn't he--don't they--live there now?” “Nope--tree's gone and so is the house.” “Gone? Gone where?” “Gone out of existence--vamoosed. Here's what happened, and it's a peach of a tale too: One night about six months ago there came up a hard thunderstorm--lots of lightning and gobs of thunder, not to mention rain and wind a plenty. In the midst of it a bolt hit the Van Nicht elm--ker-flewie--and just naturally tore it into flinders. When I saw it myself the next day it was converted from a landmark into the biggest whisk broom in the world. The neighbours were saying that it rained splinters round there for ten minutes after the bolt struck. I guess they didn't exaggerate much at that, because--” “Was the house struck too? Was anybody hurt?” Olcott cut in on him. “No, the house escaped somehow--had a few shingles ripped off the roof, and some of its windows smashed in by flying scraps; that was all. And nobody about the place suffered anything worse than a stunning. But the fright killed the older sister--Miss Rachael. Anyhow, that's what the doctors think. She didn't have a mark on her, but she died in about an hour, without ever speaking. I guess it was just as well, too, that she did. If she had survived the first shock I judge the second one would just about have finished her.” “The second shock? You don't mean the lightning?” “No, no!” Morgan hastened to explain. “Lightning never plays a return date--never has need to, I take it. I mean the shock of what happened after daylight next morning. “That was the queerest part of the whole thing--that was what made a really big story out of it. We ran two columns about it ourselves, and the A. P. carried it for more than a column.