The step on the stairs was an unsteady step. The foreman reeled into
the room. Ned's eyes brightened. Would not Bob Platt's opportune spree
seem the explanation of any difficulty that might arise on account of
the lost copy, and also of any deficiency in the type-setting?
Still he hardly felt secure from detection until he saw the foreman
with the quoins and the shooting-stick in his hand. Not so tipsy was
Bob Platt that he was not now as always the deft and experienced
handicraftsman. A blow from the mallet here and a blow there,--the
locking was done; and Ned, feeling tipsy himself, dizzy with
excitement, crept out and sat down on the dark staircase.
He wished no one to hear how he panted, for he could hardly breathe as
he reflected on his daring deed. His eyes were hot; he wanted no one
to see the exultant gleam that was chasing the fright out of them.
Now and then he squirmed aside to escape a big foot that brought a
burly shadow lumbering up the stairs, for the printers were coming in
again; so presently were the latest dispatches and the last of the
copy. The telephone bell continually jingled. There was once more
the stir of haste and work and confusion in the composing-room,--the
setting up of the final columns for the other forms. Ned listened
occasionally, expecting to hear his name called. But Bob Platt did not
need him. It seemed a long time that he sat there, gazing up through
the narrow stair window at the stars, those fair and foreign worlds,
glittering so high above the roofs, above the clouds, above the winds.
He heard now and then the agitated voice of the telegraph editor. Once
a reporter came up the stairs in great bounds and with a momentum as
if he had been flung from a catapult. Doubtless he thought he had a
"scoop." "It's a fake, I bet," thought Ned, recovering his normal
size, for he had shrunken to very small proportions to avoid that
headlong rush. He had the best of reasons in his own experience to know
how very thin some of these scoops were.
He realized how the hour was wearing on when he heard the rattle of the
mailing wagons on the stones in the side street. It must be midnight.
Suddenly the thunder of the printing-press broke forth, clank, clank,
clamor and clank. The air was vibrating with its regular, rhythmic
throbs. The building palpitated with it as if it were alive. It was
like the beating heart of a great full-pulsed civilization.
"They're printing my work right now," cried Ned with all the pride of
an author.
Then a twinge of anxiety seized him. He remembered his limited
opportunities, and he had the grace to hope that there were not too
many mistakes in the type-setting.
But such a sight has rarely been seen as that presented by the third
column of the second page when the reeking sheets came from the press.
It was probably discovered by the more distant subscribers receiving
the journal by mail before the paper, as personified by its employees,
knew what had happened to itself.
The town, the immediate vicinity, also read it betimes. And
certainly, although the enormity was caught in the second edition and
hastily replaced with an article already in type on the tariff, the
editor-in-chief was an object of pity the next morning, when opening
complacently the folds of the journal, his eye fell on Ned's handiwork
in the midst of the wit and wisdom of the important editorials. There,
instead of the severe "reply" that should prove he was no merely
malicious calumniator of innocence and integrity, was a typographical
caricature of the prospectus of the paper.
Wildly leaded, with inverted u's and n's and p's and d's, incredibly
"fat," it drunkenly and disconnectedly protested its devotion to the
best interests of the public; "the People's Paper," it reiterated, with
every inadvertent caper the printer's art is heir to. It bragged of
its facilities, its presses, its talented writers, its supplements,
and with orthographical vagaries to which the phonetic craze presents
a soberly conventional aspect it pointed with pride to its career as a
popular educator. Such "spells" as Ned had perpetrated! Lastly, with a
crookedness that was very like a typographic leer, it begged to call
attention to its handsome appearance.
Rude Boreas was but a piping reed to the way the staff roared with
wrath. Ned arrived at the office in the midst of the storm. He had a
confused sense of the general desolation; then the surroundings were
canceled by the sight of the foreman's face, pale and agitated.
"What ails the boss?" he demanded of a junior compositor.
"The grand bounce!" responded that worthy.
Ned winced. This was an unexpected turn of affairs. He remembered the
foreman's wife, who had fallen into a hopeless stage of consumption,
and their four small and helpless girls.
"He has been tight afore this, a-many a time," said Ned doggedly,
trying to justify himself in his own mind for not having foreseen this
possibility. Scheme as he might, things went worse and worse. "He has
been drunk time and time again."
"Never like this," said the young typo, bursting with laughter. "My
eye! When I first saw that column I thought I had the jim-jams myself."
In the investigations that were in progress the foreman admitted
that he had been very drunk the previous night. Therefore he was at
the mercy of anything that circumstantial evidence could prove upon
him. The fact was elicited by reference to the proof that the article
in question had been set up correctly. "And then," he confessed, "I
came up here as drunk as a mink--a mule--after everything was in the
chase, to lock the form, and like a tom-fool I must have set up this
prospectus from the new copy, and I don't know _how_ I could have
knocked the type into this crazy pi."
This seemed the only reasonable solution of the mystery, and it was
accepted without demur or question. While Ned went about his ordinary
work he listened anxiously to the sound of the editor's voice as he
still bemoaned himself with his confrères in the "rinktum." Time
had softened his sorrows only a very little. His tones were still
pervaded by rage and grief, modulated but slightly by an appreciation
of futility. It was like the subsiding anguish of a bull-dog when the
burglar is gone!
Ned could but hope that the "bouncing" of the foreman would be
reconsidered. This Bob Platt was a good fellow, and heretofore his
weakness for strong drink had never interfered with his capable
performance of duty. He had been in the office twenty years as man and
boy; and now he was to be chucked out of it for an offense which he had
never committed.
"He oughtn't ter have been drunk," thought Ned.
And this was very true!
Bob Platt was a good printer, however; gilt-edged, Ned argued, taking
courage,--and could no doubt easily find work elsewhere, with all his
experience as foreman and capacity in management. Then Ned reflected
that this story would be likely to create a ripple in typographic
circles, and employers would be indisposed to engage a printer whose
sprees expressed themselves in such fantastic publicity. Bob Platt
might fail to get work. And there was the sick wife, and there were the
small girls.
Ned once more began the profitable and pleasant occupation of hoping
against hope. The staff would _never_ part with Bob Platt. Ned hardly
believed they could run the paper without him.
The printer's devil would not realize the mischief he had
unintentionally done till he saw Bob Platt standing in the door of the
composing-room, leaving behind him his friends, his twenty years of
industry and capacity, and the trustworthy reputation they had earned
for him, all lost, as completely canceled as the editor's copy.
He was trying to carry it off jauntily. His hat was stuck on one side.
He chewed hard on his quid of tobacco. He laughed as he nodded over his
shoulder to the group of printers in the composing-room. "Be good to
yourselves, boys! So long!"
Ned saw the haggard change in his face as he turned. He was going out
empty-handed, with a dying wife and four small girls, to meet the cold,
hard, tight-fisted, grinding world. Ned knew how cold, how hard, how
tight-fisted, how grinding that world is!
"Say!" he screamed suddenly, throwing himself upon Bob Platt, "I done
it! I done it! I done it, myself. If they hang me for it I can't hide
it! I burnt the copy an' distributed the type of that editorial, an'
fixed the purspectus in its place"--he remembered how awfully it
looked--"as well as I could." The champion concluded with a sob.
Bob Platt stood for a moment staring, motionless.
"You Black-eyed Bamboozler of Beelzebub!" he exclaimed, with an
unconscious alliterative habit contracted from the corrupting influence
of headlines.
He might have been expected to fall on the self-accuser's neck for
joy. He did nothing of the sort. He clutched Ned by the nape of that
structure, and the doughty devil's feet hardly touched the floor once
in the rapid transit to the "rinktum."
"Here's this Imp of Iniquity," cried the foreman indignantly, "who says
that he distributed the type and canceled the copy and set up that
prospectus on purpose!"
"What on earth"--they mentioned a different region--"did you do it
for?" rose the editorial chorus.
"'Cause," sobbed the champion censor of the press, "I didn't want that
copee ter be printed. 'T warn't true!"
There was a short silence.
The conclave of editors stood aghast at the idea of printing truth only!
The managing editor was the first to recover his faculties. "You are
the boy who was arrested about this affair of Gorham's Theatre, I
believe?" he said.
"Yes, sir," sobbed Ned. "An' Mr. Gorham never had no more to do with
burnin' that theaytre than I had. 'T was ter _spite him_ it was burned."
"Then you know who did burn it?"
The managing editor had fairly cornered Ned, but the obstinate boy
refused to reply. For a time threats and persuasions were alike
useless. Only by strongly representing to him that Gorham would be
ruined unless the matter were cleared up was the truth sifted out
little by little.
Mr. Gorham was finally summoned, and a full explanation ensued. He
fairly foamed at the mouth with rage when with much difficulty he was
at last made to understand the nature and extent of the suspicions
harbored against him. He promptly identified the several malefactors
from Ned's description of them, called in the police, and gave such
details of their associates, habits, and habitat that before nightfall
one of them, the bandy-legged scamp, who had once been employed about
the theatre as a supernumerary actor, was arrested and safely lodged in
jail. He "squealed" very promptly and earnestly in the hope of being
allowed the benefit of "State's evidence," and by his means the star's
diamonds were traced through a variety of "fences" and recovered; his
accomplice in this theft was also apprehended by the trail of the
stolen costumes, and somewhat later the "first player" was captured and
cast for a rôle with a long run behind the bars. Ned was much relieved
when it was now made known that the company had lost nothing by the
forcing of the safe in the theatre, for contrary to the usual habit the
receipts were not left on that occasion in the office of the building
and the criminals had gained practically nothing in bursting the lock.
Ned was amazed to see how the truth does prevail, how readily and
implicitly his story was believed when it was given from the witness
stand, and how promptly he was acquitted. Gorham took advantage of
every technicality and prosecuted the villains to the extremest limit
of the law. They deserved all that they got, which was indeed good
measure, but in his observation of Gorham in these days Ned became
more and more aware that impulse is a poor substitute for principle as
a basis of action, and that although impulse may serve as an excuse
for much that is fierce or weak, it detracts from the merit of what is
good. Gorham's kindly whim which restored him to liberty was no whit
more kindly than the severe editor's lecture bidding him observe what
great evils may grow from a cowardly concealment of the truth.
"It would have ruined us all but for the gilt-edged way the champion
set that type," the managing editor presently observed aside, with a
laugh, to his colleague. And with the recollection the editor-in-chief,
whose copy was canceled by the devil, was at last able to laugh too.
For those strong and false accusations of Gorham, which would have laid
the paper liable for libel, were never published, and the insurance
companies made good the loss by the fire in great haste and with many
plausible and polite excuses for the previous delay.
Peter Bateman's perjury was committed in so important a case that it
did not escape notice. On the trial he broke down and confessed, hoping
to elude punishment on the strength of his penitence. In fact he was
so limp, so tearful, so flabby, so fat, that he produced a youthful,
irresponsible impression, and narrowly missing the State Prison, he was
sent to the Reform School, where it is to be hoped he is learning that
there is some policy as well as piety in keeping the ninth commandment.
Ned continues to work in the composing-room bossed by Bob Platt. For
on the memorable day when the champion's exploit of type-setting
was explained, the whole editorial corps turned to and besought the
discharged foreman, unjustly accused and maltreated, to remain, and
after much insistence he gracefully yielded.
But Bob Platt learned a lesson too, and has joined the Sons of
Temperance.
Often now when the evening is lingering long on the spires and domes
and mansard roofs, and the moon rises up from among them somewhere, as
if she were a resident of the town rarely straying beyond the corporate
limits, and the mocking-bird mounts his perch in the barber-shop
below and sings his roundelay,--poor captive troubadour!--and the
stars muster one by one, and the composing-room is dusky save for a
dim gas-jet here and there, and is filled with mellow shadows and
mellow memories too, the foreman and the devil are wont to lean on
the window-sill and look out and enjoy the interval of rest, and the
touch of the breeze, and the faint, fading, roseate flush in the west,
and laugh as they talk over again in much amity this exploit of the
champion's type-setting.
The Riverside Press
_Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A._
* * * * *
BOOKS BY
"Charles Egbert Craddock."
(MARY N. MURFREE.)
THE CHAMPION. With a Frontispiece. 12mo, $1.20, _net_.
IN THE TENNESSEE MOUNTAINS. Short Stories. 16mo, $1.25.
DOWN THE RAVINE. For Young People. Illustrated. 16mo, $1.00.
THE PROPHET OF THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS. A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.
IN THE CLOUDS. A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.
THE STORY OF KEEDON BLUFFS. For Young People. 16mo, $1.00.
THE DESPOT OF BROOMSEDGE COVE. A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.
WHERE THE BATTLE WAS FOUGHT. A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.
HIS VANISHED STAR. A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.
THE MYSTERY OF WITCH-FACE MOUNTAIN. 16mo, $1.25.
THE YOUNG MOUNTAINEERS. Illustrated 12mo, $1.50.
THE JUGGLER. A Novel. 16mo, $1.25.
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY,
BOSTON AND NEW YORK.