good story by an immaterial explanation and an amende. The city editor reflected that Kirby, with his steady training and his unerring instinct for facts, would not have made such a blunder. If he could not have written the story half so well, he would have ferreted out the exact identity at least, or restrained his desire to wreak his vengeance on Longworth until identity was established. The substance of this observation Mr. Kirby did not fail to make to the city editor in confidence afterward.

Mr. Forrest acknowledged with dignified condescension that he might have taken the trouble to make sure, if he had thought there was any doubt. He added with stinging irony, wholly gratuitous, that, considering how notorious was his error, he was astonished that the city editor had not detected it in the copy. This was an ill-natured fling at the writer of

been investigating the story he would not have made the mistake of putting such an error into copy.

But it is unnecessary to waste space upon these disagreeable details. Kirby made a hasty remark about jumping at conclusions, and the city editor admitted in his own mind the absolute unreliability of dramatic critics in matters of pure fact. The sporting editor observed that as the facts about the other Longworth were all true, he could not understand why any Longworth should raise a howl about it. This was unfair in temper, since our Longworth had not raised a howl. He had, in the politest manner only, asked to be exculpated from a false accusation.

The new aspect of the case surprised us all. In the general willingness to let Mr. Forrest revenge himself upon a presumptive Longworth the actual Longworth who had offended

him was stirred to activity again. The city editor revolved the situation in his mind all day, and, in order to protect Mr. Forrest's dignity, determined personally to investigate the matter further. In the multiplicity of his labors, however, he neglected to do so that day, and the correcting note was left out of the paper next morning.

The next afternoon the foreman of the jobprinting department came up from his separate quarters and inquired of the city editor if a note of that purport had been received. "Longworth asked me," said he, "to request you to publish it."

"Longworth!" echoed the city editor. "Do you know him?"

"Oh, yes," said the foreman. "I've known him for years, and he is out here now."

He stepped quickly to the door, called out into the hall very loudly, "Longworth!" and the next moment there entered the benevolent and taciturn old job printer whom the religious editor had been addressing as "Mr. Longworth" for the past two years!

The city editor gave this apparition a keen and reproachful look as if he would not have thought it. of him, and then, finding himself at bay, suavely explained that the correction had been carelessly overlooked the night before, but would certainly be published next morning.

very much

tunity to arrest all those errors of haste and imagination that he had been able to detect heretofore only after they had been betrayed in print. A better man for the post could not have been made to hand; and at his table, alongside the city editor's desk, he soon became one of the most valuable aids, one of the most conscientious and untiring of workers.

It was curious to notice that not even the discursive and pretentious dramatic critic or the opinionative Mr. Burke objected to his corrections, so long as they were suggested or made in the privacy of office confidence and not in the publicity of print. Indeed, they soon learned to lean upon his friendly hand and his unerring memory. It was Longworth's exactitude of knowledge that lent additional value to their work; it was his patient attention that made all the force strong in facts, more effective in literary style, and finally more dependent in spirit. Longworth soon pervaded the whole local department, and all relied upon him. He

"I'll be obliged," said Longworth in a thin and quavering voice, that sounded to the city editor like his handwriting translated into sound. The old man said it simply and earnestly, as if it were to be a favor bestowed upon him unworthily, and there was a kindly, pleased smile upon his face.

Longworth was plainly entitled to the explanation, and his gentleness and lack of selfassertion had their due effect in softening the city editor to its admission without further inquiry.

The announcement to the staff that Robert Longworth was the elderly job printer carried its full surprise. Only, the religious editor's eye brightened with the fire of conscious penetration in view of the fact that he had even unwittingly known Longworth so long.

We all knew him better soon; for, needing a copy-reader to assist the city editor, Longworth was sought at his "case " and readily agreed to undertake the duty, which thus gave him the revision of all the copy and an oppor

was the most honest and toilsome slave that ever served under the lamp. Even the city editor soon took his turn of adding burdens to those willing shoulders, and felt safer that Longworth was at hand to smooth over the difficulties of shirking.

All this is due to him. This story would possess no value if it was not true, and in confidences such as should exist between the reader and this confessor nothing should be reserved. So the confession of his value and his faithfulness is due to the patient and gentle old man who sat night after night at his table, going with rapid fingers through the great piles of copy, his kindly face illumined, as if by a nimbus, by the gaslight that sifted through his white hair.

Longworth was not talkative, but like other agreeable spirits he would converse when the conditions were favorable. When there was a lull in work, or during the brief period of relaxation after the night's labor was done and

the staff lounged about, sitting on the desks, to recall and recount incidents and gather suggestions, Longworth was not averse to engaging in the conversation. He discussed news critically, and frequently gave suggestions that opened up entirely new avenues in sensations apparently exhausted. He watched the merely effective as well as the legal points of all the mysteries and tragedies so dear to the reportorial heart. He always recurred to the other Longworth's bigamy case as one of unusual interest. He it was who unearthed the legal point that, as the body of Longworth had not been produced nor the death absolutely proved, and the statutory time for presumption of death had not elapsed, the payment of the "benefit" to the second wife was legally nothing more than a gratuity from the Order of Good Friends, and that the first wife by proving her prior and legal marriage could secure payment from the Order as if none had ever been made. He returned to the case often-so often that at last it came to be called the "Great Longworth Mystery," and even Kirby became infected with his idea of the possibility of a still more startling dénouement. That Monsieur Vidocq of the staff had little appreciation of the romantic and picturesque in crime, but he possessed a sterling idea of the value of facts, and this drew him nearer to Longworth. For Longworth had unusually combined those qualities so often found divided, a conscientious devotion to facts and an artistic appreciation of their vivid and effective grouping and coloring for honest results.

It would not do to say that Kirby fully comprehended Longworth's sensitive anticipation of the opportunity to heap upon the climax of the story already related by Mr. Forrest any unexpected dénouement; but it may have occurred to him keenly that if the dead Longworth were only missing it would be a triumph of fact to overtake and confound him with punishment, or, if he were dead, to supply the missing link in the first widow's testimony by discovering proof of the fact. The unsympathizing nature of his mind did not see, as Longworth saw, the irony of such a result in its effect upon a jury in compelling it to allow the first widow's claim and thus compensate all the afflicted ones. Perhaps even Longworth was not taking that view of it. Whatever their differing motives, the conversations that we overheard between Longworth and Kirby, in which the old man's quavering and gentle voice was pitched in an ardent tenor key, seemed solely designed to point out the importance of settling the mystery itself as a matter of truth.

"There is nothing at all certain," he would say, "in the mere presumption that, because

this man took passage on the boat and never returned, he is dead. There is nothing certain, either, in the mere presumption that, because he has not returned, he is not dead. The question is, what is the fact-what is the mystery?"

"A hopeless crank!" continued Mr. Forrest, gloomily, upon one of these occasions, as we walked out for lunch. "I think the old man has a special and personal hatred of that poor dead and gone creature, simply because they bore the same name. And I don't know any more ingenious contrivance for gratifying his malice than to set Kirby on to keep the ghost unquiet."

But it was not hatred. There was genuine journalistic instinct and suggestiveness in his idea: nothing less than that would have finally induced the city editor himself to take a due share of interest in the possibility of there being further development in the "Great Longworth Mystery."

The winter passed, marked along its cold. and foggy course by Longworth's asthmatic struggles. He said it was asthma, and it probably was asthma before it became consumption. But he never complained; was even apologetic if one of his paroxysms of coughing drew from any of the nervous and impatient young men a rattling of chairs or the hasty and quickly regretted ejaculation of "Cheese it!" or "Rats!"

When the spring came, only a milder and muggier edition of winter, the old man would come in at noon from his vital waking struggles with his cough, haggard in look and broken in strength, but not the less conscientious in his devotion to his duties. He was upborne by something of that physical heroism which in its contemplation brings the hardest world to its knees in gentleness and sympathy. In some such silent and figurative attitude the little world of the " Democratic Banner" staff stood towards his shattering cough and his ofttimes pitiful struggles to gasp back the difficult breath.

"Suppose," he suggested one night to the city editor, "this mysterious Longworth is not dead at all! Suppose he merely stepped ashore at some landing and made away with the intention of creating the impression that he had been lost overboard—an impression which the subsequent destruction of the steamer made unnecessary! He alone knew at that time that he was a bigamist, and the dread of exposure, if any was felt, was felt by him alone. Is there not enough motive there to color the theory of mere disappearance instead of death? It would be nothing to a man who had lived a lie for years and maintained with two wives a theoretical existence to duplicate that existence with a third, or, for that matter, to deceive

all his acquaintances and the whole power of the law itself. Suppose, instead of being destroyed in the explosion, he had merely stepped ashore and into another name and another residence! How do we know his name is Robert Longworth? What do we know of him when his wife could not fathom him? May he not be one of those singular men, incapable of enjoying a regular life and destined to eccentricity- finding security in his very boldness? Is anything certain of him? Is it not at least possible that he merely stepped ashore'?"

When Mrs. Longworth of Pennsylvania arrived with the expressed intention of remaining until her suit was decided and the legality of her widowhood established, Kirby interviewed her upon this line of conjecture. But he found the first Mrs. Longworth a woman of unusual coolness and resolution, who, however easily she might have been inveigled into romantic marriage, had strict views as to reporters. Her case, she said, was

a

in the hands of her lawyers, and she could not discuss it in the newspapers. Yes, Mr. Longworth might be alive. She was prepared for anything after hearing of his second marriage. She was not more surprised at that, however, than she was at having married him herself. Her acquaintance with him previous to the marriage had been brief, and she knew absolutely nothing of his life before she met him. Yes, he might have had another name; she was no longer sure of anything.

Mrs. Longworth of Pennsylvania impressed Kirby rather unfavorably as a reservoir of journalistic information. But her daughter, he confessed abruptly, was a "daisy."

"Her daughter?" inquired old man Longworth, as he listened to this report.

"The girl," said Kirby, "is as pretty as a peach; young, well educated, and has charming manners."

That she was all Kirby painted her was true. The suit, first passed, then postponed, and again continued, seemed likely to develop into a chancery case. Still Mrs. Longworth of Pennsylvania remained at her post, perhaps

KIRBY INTO THE OFFICE."

from a very natural hatred of the woman who claimed the name she bore, more than from any desire to secure the mere pittance at stake.

And her stay succeeded in permanently fixing Kirby's interest in the case, since, the first we knew, he was married to the daughter and thus irrevocably committed to the solution of the mystery. They had been quietly married without warning. Kirby was a good fellow, a sensible one, and well deserved his good fortune. And we soon had an opportunity to judge how good it was; for one evening he brought Mrs. Kirby into the office, "just to show her the den, you know, boys," and the city editor's staff of envious celibates looked with unmistakable admiration upon the trim and pretty young girl, her bright eyes just even with Kirby's broad shoulders, whence they glanced up towards his own with a constant and dancing delight in his mere presence and in her pride and young joy. She had surprised all the boys with their coats off, hard at work, but hats were quickly doffed to give her that royal welcome that men willingly express to youthful feminine beauty.

You may be sure there was nothing ever came home to the "Democratic Banner" like this "Great Longworth Mystery." Already there was Longworth's namesake on the staff, landed there by an accident of the case, and now here was his daughter transplanted among us, so to speak, by a stranger accident of the case, and shaking hands in happy and smiling ease with all the young men. She even shook hands with old man Longworth himself, and Longworth's kindly old eyes rested upon her with gentle delight expressed in them, and, with all of us, he followed with appreciation her trim and graceful figure as it moved about the room.

The "Democratic Banner" was committed to the revelation of the "Great Longworth Mystery" beyond escape. It had become something of a family affair too, involving at least a little tact in its new bearings. And so, after Kirby's marriage, the city editor took down his assignment book and made a change of suggestions. The new one read thus:

Sept. 15.-Longworth trial, U. S. Court. Full descriptive report. R. LONGWORTH.

This was a mere memorandum, however, for Longworth was not employed as a reporter and was not assignable to duty of that sort save with his own consent. But, upon the point of delicacy, it was very plain that Kirby could not be assigned to report the trial. When I mentioned to old man Longworth my desire that he, who understood the case so well, should undertake it, he flatly declined the task.

One can never tell how impressions are made; but out of this declination, somehow or other, the shadow of a suspicion developed in the mind of the city editor. Was it something in Longworth's manner?—no; in his voice? Or was it a mere cruelty of fancy, arising from annoyance, that made me suspect that old man Longworth himself, sitting there toiling in his almost pathetic way, was the center of that mystery? The idea seemed to insinuate itself, and every time the old man returned to the subject, with his startling suggestion that Robert Longworth might still be alive, the suspicion grew and fixed itself more firmly in the mind of the city editor. Was not the Robert Longworth whose mystery seemed to be burned up in that burning boat the Robert Longworth who was possessed of this absorbing interest in the outcome of the case?

For a month the city editor carried this secret doubt about with him, being debarred, in such phase of the case, from consultation with Kirby or even from taking any member of the staff into his confidence. There was a certain feeling of guilt in harboring the sus

picion, and yet a certain instinct of its possibility of truth. Finally he determined to take the question to Longworth himself for answer.

And thus it was that one night, while he sat discussing the endless possibilities of the mystery, he fixed his eyes keenly and unflinchingly upon the old man, and asked:

"Mr. Longworth, don't you know that this man went safely ashore from that boat and is alive to-day?"

The question was the sword-thrust of Hamlet behind the curtain. If nothing was concealed there nothing would be pierced. As he delivered it the city editor felt his heart beat and the flush rise to his face that was to be of triumph, perhaps—or mortification. But it faded away into the mere heat of expectation, as the old man, looking him steadily in the eye, and with gentle earnestness and simple confidence, answered:

"I can say I do know it, Mr. Brown, because I believe it as firmly as I believe you are sitting there. Perhaps it is because I have thought of it so much from the standpoint of that theory. There are more curious things in the world than ever creep into fiction, and I believe this Longworth mystery is one of them. No man who had lived the double life he lived could be trusted to die upon such testimony as there is in this case."

There was no guile in those gentle eyes, no fear or secret emotion in that familiar and eloquent voice, and with guilty pleasure the city editor recognized that the thrust which might have returned so much mortification upon himself or pressed such guilt upon the old man had passed through the curtain only to impale vague shadows.

From that night there never was a time when he heard the hollow knell of old man Longworth's death cough sounding, or looked upon his kindly old face bending over the piles of copy at the little desk beside him, that the city editor did not make reparation in remorse for the wrong of that thought, for the uncleanness of mind, harbored for that long month.

Yet, it might have been-but no matter now. The crisis of the Longworth mystery approached rapidly. Summer passed, and when September arrived, bringing with it the trial, it brought a summons for old man Longworth from a court whose jurisdiction covers no contempts, since it has no mandates that are not obeyed. Rapidly enough now was the weak but racking cough tearing at the very citadel doors of his life, and Mr. Burke announced, when message came one day that the old man was confined to bed and unable to come to his desk, "There is not another round left in him, and he is out of the ring for good." And