be unearthed in the _Malefactor_. If he resists we will drag his family
skeleton from the privacy of his domestic closet. There is money in it
for the paper, fame for you--are you ambitious, 216?"

"I am--bitious."

"Go, then," cried the editor, rising and waving his hand
imperiously--"go and 'seek the bubble reputation'."

"The bubble shall be sought," the young man replied, and leaping into a
man-hole in the floor, disappeared. A moment later the editor, who after
dismissing his subordinate, had stood motionless, as if lost in thought,
sprang suddenly to the man-hole and shouted down it: "Hello, 216?"

"Aye, aye, sir," came up a faint and far reply.

"About that 'bubble reputation'--you understand, I suppose, that the
reputation which you are to seek is that of the other man."

In the execution of his duty, in the hope of his employer's approval, in
the costume of his profession, Mr. Longbo Spittleworth, otherwise known
as 216, has already occupied a place in the mind's eye of the
intelligent reader. Alas for poor Mr. Inhumio!

A few days after these events that fearless, independent and
enterprising guardian and guide of the public, the San Francisco _Daily
Malefactor_, contained a whole-page article whose headlines are here
presented with some necessary typographical mitigation:

"Hell Upon Earth! Corruption Rampant in the Management of the Sorrel