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n his companion's sleeve. Mr. Fisbee twisted up another sheet, and employed his eyes in following the course of a crack in the plaster, a slender black aperture which staggered across the dusty ceiling and down the dustier wall to disappear behind a still dustier map of Carlow County. "That's the trouble!" exclaimed Parker, observing the other's preoccupation. "Soon as you get to writing a line or two that seems kind of promising, you begin to take a morbid interest in that blamed crack. It's busted up enough copy for me, the last eight days, to have filled her up twenty times over. I don't know as I ever care to see that crack again. I turned my back on it, but there wasn't any use in that, because if a fly lights on you I watch him like a brother, and if there ain't any fly I've caught a mania for tapping my teeth with a pencil, that is just as good." To these two gentlemen, thus disengaged, reentered (after a much longer absence than Miss Selina's quatrain justified) Mr. Ross Schofield, a healthy glow of exertion lending pleasant color to his earnest visage, and an almost visible laurel of success crowning his brows. In addition to this imaginary ornament, he was horned with pencils over both ears, and held some scribbled sheets in his hand. "I done a good deal down there," he announced cheerfully, drawing up a chair to the desk. "I thought up a heap of things I've heard lately, and they'll fill up mighty well. That there poem of Miss Seliny's was a kind of an inspiration to me, and I tried one myself, and it didn't come hard at all. When I got started once, it jest seemed to flow from me. I didn't set none of it up," he added modestly, but with evident consciousness of having unearthed genius in himself and an elate foreknowledge of the treat in store for his companions. "I thought I'd ort to see how you liked it first." He offered the papers to Mr. Parker, but the foreman shook his head. "You read it, Ross," I said. "I don't believe I feel hearty enough to-day. Read the items first--we can bear the waiting." "What waiting?" inquired Mr. Schofield. "For the poem," replied Parker, grimly. With a vague but not fleeting smile, Ross settled the sheets in order, and exhibited tokens of that pleasant nevousness incident to appearing before a critical audience, armed with literature whose merits should delight them out of the critical attitude. "I run across a great scheme down there," he volunteered amiabl
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