AGREE that I have a certain respect for the reporter; I acknowledge that, in a measure, he may be almost a necessary adjunct to the whimsical side of our civilization, but I am not willing to credit him, nor the press in general, with all the

progress of thought, freedom of speech, and development of virtue, to which this epoch places the witness of its hand and seal.

The reporter as an individual I cannot regard as a sincere man. He assumes an air that is disagreeable to me; he has pretenses, he asserts with a degree of pride that he knows nothing of the art of making money; looks with an easy form of contempt upon the person who possesses the money-getting knack, and at the same time boastfully declares that he has made men rich, as though that were a great virtue. Yes, and he has made politicians famous, and he has reached down, felt about in the lower strata of the theatre, found a thing, has playfully tossed it up, and lo, another star has appeared in the firmament of mimicry. But we will, or rather I will—as I care not what you may do-I say that I will let all that pass. What I want to get at is this: I do not agree that the reporter who thinks anything of himself should bedraggle his art-I will pull a courtesy until it pops and call it an art-bedraggle his art by sinking down to detective work. And this leads up to what I desired to say.

When the young fellow came to the boarding-house he took so little notice of things about him that no one among us appeared to care what his name might be. I first noticed him sitting opposite me at the dinner table, and I should have paid no attention to him had he not hacked at a ball of cold butter and sent it rolling down the table. He blushed and stammered in such confusion that I had to laugh at him; and when I have laughed at a man I feel that I am acquainted with him. Between us there was at the time no sign of a making-up to each other, but the next day, when he came into the sitting-room, he addressed me as Mr. Vance, although I had not told him my name.

*Written for Short Stories-Copyrighted.

"Do you expect to stop with us long?" I asked.

"I don't know how long I may stay at this exact place," he replied, "but I live in the city."

"Oh, you do. In some sort of business ? "

"Yes, for want of a better name you might call it business. I'm a reporter."

"That so? New paper?" I asked.

"No. Why did you think that?"

Oh, as you have come away out here to a rather ordinary boarding-house, I didn't know but that you were working on an experiment."

Pretty sharp yourself, eh?" he said laughing.

"I don't know that I am particularly sharp, and yet I have been a sort of Argus, with my hundred eyes open, and I may add that I have cut a tooth for each eye."

"Good," he said, and after a moment of silence he asked: "What line are you in?"

"In a line that has not fallen into a pleasant place. I was in a commission business until lately, but I failed."

"To advantage, I hope?" I looked at him, and his face was so shrewd and his eyes so penetrating that I wondered why he should have been confused when he had rolled the ball of cold butter down the table.

"What do you mean?" I asked, after eying him closely.

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Oh, simply that you were not worsted by the failure."

"But I was worsted by it. I don't see how it could have been otherwise."

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Easily enough. You could have saved yourself."

"Yes," I replied, with a tincture of sarcasm in my utterance, "but not without violence to a sentiment which I hold—the sentiment of honor."

"Oh, that's it, eh? You were not in business very long, I dare say

?"

"But what has that to do with it?" I asked, now roused until my words were pronounced with a strength beyond their customary wont.

"If you don't know what it has to do with it, you have cut but an unimportant figure in the business world."

"Sir!" I exclaimed.

"That's all right," he replied, proceeding to fill his pipe. I waited until he had lighted it-waited, indeed, until he continued: "You are surely old enough, and having cut a hundred eye-teeth

you are wise enough to know the truth, that business is but a form of legalized robbery."

"I don't care to talk to you, sir," I replied.

"All right. If the subject is painful to you, we'll try something else. I've got rather an unenviable assignment just at present, and perhaps you can help me out-pay you well if you happen to be of any real service. You have read of the big diamond robbery, of course. Well, the duty of nosing out the robber has been written opposite my name, and I am expected to get him."

"But why should a reporter be expected to do detective work?" I asked.

"I don't know why, but our managing editor seems to think that the bringing of criminals to justice rests with the reporter rather than with the officer of the law. At any rate, I am after that diamond robber, and I want you to help me."

I was angered, and I gave him a hard and boring look. Sir," I said, "I don't know why I should expect one following your vocation to appreciate the finer feelings of man, butwell," I added, under the cooling influence of judgment, "I'll simply decline your offer."

"All right, sir. You know best, know whether or not you are equal to the undertaking. Well," he continued, getting up and stretching himself, "if you should happen to see the robber I wish you would call my attention to him."

I made no reply to this foolish remark, and he, saying nothing more, strolled lazily out of the room. I felt that among the newspaper men he must be regarded as a sort of joke, and that in a mischief-loving mood some one in authority had assigned to him the duty of catching a thief. And yet, after all, he was a pretty shrewd fellow. He talked so directly from impulse that amid his many utterances there might sometimes be one or two that a wise man would not have been ashamed to own, but which that same wise man might not have had the recklessness to speak. It was surely strange, but I could not brush that reporter's face out of my fancy; and that afternoon, while in my own room I sat dreamily over a book, that fellow's countenance, his smile kept stealing between my eyes and the printed page. Why should this be?" I asked aloud, throwing the book aside. "This creative force that constantly reproduces his face must come from an interest that I take in him, and yet I can conceive of no cause why I should give him a thought.

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And, therefore, what rot it is to hold him in my fancy. I will turn off this productive light-will throw his face off into the dark. And it seemed that I did throw it off into a dark corner; but there it was, I could see it, dim and shadowy, but with a luminous smile. I sprang to my feet, alarmed, convinced that I was not well. I went down, got on my wheel and sped over the boulevard, out through the park into the open country. I fell in with a well-known character, a man who had pumped a bicycle across Asia, and I had a long talk with him; and while returning I joined a young woman in whom I was more than casually interested, and yet when I reached home I knew that during all this time, my talk with the traveller, my laughter with the girl, the reporter's face had been dodging between me and every object that I had encountered on the road.

That evening at dinner the reporter came into the dining-room, gave me a smiling nod, sat down, leaned over the table toward me, and asked:

"Have you considered my proposition?"

"I was not aware, sir, that you had made one. Oh, you refer

to "

"Yes, to the proposition that I made you that if you would help me to catch a diamond robber, I would pay you for it." "My dear sir,” I spoke up, “I don't even know your name, and

Every one at the table had turned toward us, and in a low tone I said to him: "Pray, let us drop the discussion." "Certainly, and without prayers," he replied.

"What do you mean by 'without prayers'?" I asked.

"Didn't you say 'pray, let us drop the discussion'? And that, as I understand it, means let us pray and then drop the discussion."

"It means nothing of the sort," I replied, "and no sensible man would assert that it does. It simply means that I pray that you will

"All right, then, we'll drop it without further explanation and surely without any devotional exercises. Did you ever eat chinquapin acorns? "

"What!" I exclaimed, looking eagerly at him, for I then felt that he must be insane; and now his peculiar fascination for me was clear he was seeking to taint my mind with his own. The other boarders were laughing, but I saw no cause for levity. I

was saddened. One man, a red-faced, loud-mouth fellow, began to tell of his boyhood on the farm; that he had eaten chinquapin acorns and also the genuine chinquapin itself; and another fellow, a braying fool, said that as he had intended when a boy to go upon the minstrel stage, he had spent the most of his time looking for chestnuts. I left the room, a roar of laughter following me. I went to my room, lighted the gas, and sought to read, but I saw nothing but that reporter's face flat upon the page. There was a doctor in the house and I was thinking of consulting him, when there came a tap at the door. "Come in," I said, and in stepped the reporter.

"Pardon me, Mr. Vance, but as you are the only man hereabouts who is at all congenial to me, I have taken the liberty to follow you to your seclusion. Nothing makes one so selfish as loneliness."

"That's a pretty sensible remark," I replied. "Sit down."

He sat down, slowly filled his pipe, lighted it; I waiting for him to say something. And when he had set his pipe a-going, when he had brushed the tobacco off his clothes, he looked sharply at me and asked: "Have you a pistol about anywhere?" "A what!"

"A pistol."

"No, I haven't. What do you want with it?

"Didn't know but that you might want to swap it for a better

"Didn't know but you had and wanted a better one."

"Pardon me," I said, "but I don't feel very well this evening."

"I have felt better myself," he replied.

"I dare say; but what I wanted to convey was the fact that I would rather be alone."

"I get that way sometimes," he rejoined.

"Sort of an all

gone feeling. Had it once for three months at a stretch. Didn't

want any one about."

"I have it now," I replied.

"Yes, so you said. By the way, you are a man of considerable

education, aren't you?"

"I have spent much of my time, sir, among books."

"Jewelers' books?"

"What, jewelers' books! I don't understand you." "Books of the trade."