The boy took three unwilling steps toward the door. Then he turned a
puzzled face toward the managing editor.

"Say, honest, I ain't never heard of dat guy. He must be a new one.
W'ere'll I find him?"

"Oh, damn! Take those proofs to Blackie!" roared the managing editor.
And thus ended Blackie's enforced flight into the realms of dignity.

All these things, and more, I wrote to the scandalized Norah. I informed
her that he wore more diamond rings and scarf pins and watch fobs than a
railroad conductor, and that his checked top-coat shrieked to Heaven.

There came back a letter in which every third word was underlined, and
which ended by asking what the morals of such a man could be.

Then I tried to make Blackie more real to Norah who, in all her
sheltered life, had never come in contact with a man like this.

"... As for his morals--or what you would consider his morals, Sis--they
probably are a deep crimson; but I'll swear there is no yellow streak.
I never have heard anything more pathetic than his story. Blackie sold
papers on a down-town corner when he was a baby six years old. Then he
got a job as office boy here, and he used to sharpen pencils, and run
errands, and carry copy. After office hours he took care of some horses
in an alley barn near by, and after that work was done he was employed
about the pressroom of one of the old German newspaper offices.
Sometimes he would be too weary to crawl home after working half the
night, and so he would fall asleep, a worn, tragic little figure, on a
pile of old papers and sacks in a warm corner near the presses. He was
the head of a household, and every penny counted. And all the time he
was watching things, and learning. Nothing escaped those keen black
eyes. He used to help the photographer when there was a pile of plates
to develop, and presently he knew more about photography than the man
himself. So they made him staff photographer. In some marvelous way
he knew more ball players, and fighters and horsemen than the sporting
editor. He had a nose for news that was nothing short of wonderful. He
never went out of the office without coming back with a story. They used
to use him in the sporting department when a rush was on. Then he became
one of the sporting staff; then assistant sporting editor; then sporting
editor. He knows this paper from the basement up. He could operate a
linotype or act as managing editor with equal ease.

"No, I'm afraid that Blackie h