'Well,' said the editor, 'perhaps that's true. I will think about it. Of
course you did your best, and I appreciate your efforts; but I am sorry
you failed.'

'You are not half so sorry as I am,' said Rivers, as he picked up his big
Canadian fur coat and took his leave.

The editor did think about it. He thought for fully two minutes. Then he
dashed off a note on a sheet of paper, pulled down the little knob that
rang the District Messenger alarm, and when the uniformed boy appeared,
gave him the note, saying:

'Deliver this as quickly as you can.'

The boy disappeared, and the result of his trip was soon apparent in the
arrival of a very natty young woman in the editorial rooms. She was
dressed in a neatly-fitting tailor-made costume, and was a very pretty
girl, who looked about nineteen, but was, in reality, somewhat older. She
had large, appealing blue eyes, with a tender, trustful expression in
them, which made the ordinary man say: 'What a sweet, innocent look that
girl has!' yet, what the young woman didn't know about New York was not
worth knowing. She boasted that she could get State secrets from
dignified members of the Cabinet, and an ordinary Senator or Congressman
she looked upon as her lawful prey. That which had been told her in the
strictest confidence had often become the sensation of the next day in
the paper she represented. She wrote over a _nom de guerre_, and had
tried her hand at nearly everything. She had answered advertisements,
exposed rogues and swindlers, and had gone to a hotel as chambermaid, in
order to write her experiences. She had been arrested and locked up, so
that she might write a three-column account, for the Sunday edition of