t of its customary place. When there are blood-curdling wrecks
he wants the news in small type along with his port list.

"Hain't got nothing to write," he repeats sullenly. He gapes and
stretches. He knows he must obey the telegraph editor.

"Hurry! Give it to me. Give me the idea." Corkey's eye brightens.
He is a man of ideas, not of words. He has an idea. His head quakes.
The tongue begins its whirring like the fan-wheel before the clock
strikes.

"You can say that the life-saving service display a great act," says
the marine editor, relieved of a grievous duty.

His pile of telegrams grows smaller. The dreaded work will soon be
over.

"How's your rich widow?"

Corkey has not failed to plume himself on his aristocratic and familiar
acquaintance. His associates are themselves flattered. Corkey is to
take the telegraph editor to call on Mrs. Lockwin. The night editor is
jealously regarded as too smooth with the ladies. He will be left to
his own devices.

"How's your rich widow?" is repeated. But Corkey cannot hear. He is
reading a telegram that astonishes, electrifies and confuses him.

"COLLINGWOOD, 14.--After wading ten miles along shore found yawl Africa
sunk in three feet water, filled with sand and hundreds stone. Can
take you to spot. What reward? What shall we do?"

Corkey seizes the dispatch, puts on his coat, and rides downstairs. On
the street he finds it is midnight. He looks for a carriage. He sets
his watch by a jeweler's chronometer, over which a feeble gas flame
burns all night.

He changes his mind and rides back upstairs. He enters the telegraph
operators' room, where five men are at work receiving special
intelligence.

"Get Collingwood, boys."

"That drops off at Detroit. Collingwood's a day job."

The instrument is clicking. The operator takes each word as the
laborious Corkey, with short pencil, presses it into the buff-colored
paper.

CHICAGO, 14.--Let it be! Will be at Collingwood to-morrow.
CORKEY.

CHAPTER VII

A RASH ACT

David Lockwin reads the letter of Dr. Tarpion with horror.

"Heavens and earth!" he cries, and pulls at his hair, rubs his eyes and
stamps on the floor. "Heavens and earth!" This, an edifice built with
the patience and cunning of a lover, must fall to nothing.

He is as dead to Esther as on the day the yawl danced on the shining
sands of Georgian Bay.

He is terrified to know his loss. To believe that he was in da