ake it?" he asked with trembling lips.

"We have so much material on hand, just now, that we cannot possibly
purchase more," she said firmly, but feeling intensely sorry for the
boy. "It may be a good story--"

"It's the bes' story I ever heard of!" declared Skim.

"But we have no place for it in the _Millville Tribune,_" she added,
handing him back the roll.

Skim was terribly disappointed. Never, for a single moment, had he
expected "sech a throwdown as this."

"Seems to me like a bunco game," he muttered savagely. "First ye say in
yer blamed ol' paper a story's wuth thirty to fifty dollars, an' then
when I bring ye a story ye won't pay a red cent fer it!"

"Stories," suggested Louise, "are of various qualities, depending on the
experience and talent of the author. An excellent story is often refused
because the periodical to which it is offered is overstocked with
similar material. Such conditions are often trying, Skim; I've had a
good many manuscripts rejected myself."

But the boy would not be conciliated.

"I'll send it to Munsey's, thet's what I'll do; an' then you'll be durn
sorry," he said, almost ready to cry.

"Do," urged Louise sweetly. "And if they print it, Mr. Clark, I'll agree
to purchase your next story for fifty dollars."

"All right; the fifty's mine. I got witnesses, mind ye!" and he flounced
out of the room like an angry schoolboy.

"Oh, Louise," exclaimed Patsy, reproachfully, "why didn't you let me
see the thing? It would have been better than a circus."

"Poor boy!" said the literary editor, with a sigh. "I didn't want to
humiliate him more than I could help. I wonder if he really will have
the audacity to send it to Munsey's?"

And now the door opened to admit Peggy McNutt, who had been watching his
chance to stump across to the printing office as soon as Skim left
there. For Peggy had reasoned, not unjustly, that if Skim Clark could
make a fortune as an author he, Marshall McMahon McNutt, had a show to
corral a few dollars in literature himself. After lying awake half the
night thinking it over, he arose this morning with the firm intention of
competing with Skim for the village laurels. He well knew he could not
write a shuddery detective story, such as Skim had outlined, but that
early poem of his, which the boy had seemed to regard so disdainfully,
was considered by Peggy a rather clever production. He repeated it over
and over to himself, dwelling joyously on its perfect rhy