The Judge’s wife had come into the hall. Hosmer slowly shut the door, and he rubbed his hands as though they were soiled. There was trouble in his eyes, where the anger died. Mary Hosmer touched his arm; asked softly: “What is it, Bob?” He looked down at her; slowly shook his head. “Trouble, Mary,” he said frankly. “He wanted to beg, or buy, or steal the Furnace case. They’ve raked up those old affairs. The _Chronicle_ will print the whole business in the morning. He’s gone to release the story now. I guess folks will walk right by and never see us, tomorrow, Mary.” Comprehension came swiftly into her eyes; she cried rebelliously: “You’ve lived those old tales down, Bob!” He shook his head. “Anyway,” she told him, “I’m glad you--kicked him out as you did.” The Judge nodded. Then a slow smile crept into his eyes. “Matter of fact, Mary,” he said, “this affair has its funny side.” “Funny?” she echoed. “Yeah.” “Why....” “I’d written my decision before he came upstairs,” he explained. “I’d already decided the way he wanted me to.” THE COWARD I Little old Bob Dungan, his coat off, his sleeves rolled to the elbow so that they revealed the red-woolen underwear which he habitually wore, sat at his typewriter in the furthest corner of the noisy City Room and rattled off a cryptic sentence. He wrote: “_The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog._” Now this is not a piece of information calculated to interest more than a baker’s dozen of the half million readers of a metropolitan daily such as that which Bob served. The sentence as a sentence has but one virtue; it contains all of the letters of the alphabet. That is all you can say for it. Nevertheless, having written the words, Bob studied them profoundly, ticking off with his pencil each letter, from A to Izzard, and when he was done, counted those that still remained. “Nine,” he said, half aloud. And he scratched his head. “Ought to get it under that.” He put a fresh sheet in the typewriter and prepared to try again. To the casual eye of any one who might be watching from across the room, he looked like a very busy man. As a matter of fact, this was exactly the impression Bob wished to convey. He was anxious to appear busy and indispensable. For little old Bob Dungan was desperately afraid of being fired. A newspaper staff is built to meet emergencies. That means that, left to itself, it inevitably becomes top-heavy, and on days when news is slack, the City Room is half full of men waiting for an assignment that never comes. When such a condition develops, the veterans in the office know what will follow. Some fine morning, the publisher drifts down stairs and sees the idle men--idle because there is nothing for them to do. And that afternoon, the order comes to cut the staff, cut to the bone.