a runner
without first being able to walk. The committee was through with the
inquiry; the report had come into the Government printing office the day
before in the handwriting of the truthless Senator Hanway himself. It
was now set up in types, and the forethoughtful Mr. Sands had abstracted
a copy.

"As I said," explained that enterprising printer, "I've got a nose for
news. I thought it might do for a scoop, d'ye see, so I swiped it for
you."

"Let me look at it," said Richard, whose pulses were beginning to beat a
quickstep. He was remembering the value of the report as explained by
Mr. Bayard. "Let me see it, please."

Mr. Sands took from his pocket two strips of paper. Richard looked at
one and then the other; they were white as snow, guiltless of mark or
sign of ink.

"There's nothing here," said Richard, the thing beginning to be
mysterious.

For a moment Richard feared that Mr. Sands might be again immersed in
his cups. That follower of Franklin reassured him.

"The report is there all right," he observed, "only we can't read it out
here in the light. Now if we could find a dark room, one with a window,
I'd show you what I mean."

Richard returned to Mr. Gwynn's. Before they entered he gave Mr. Sands a
perfecto. The latter, who knew a good cigar from smoking many bad ones,
threw away the devastator and lighted Richard's. He rolled it from one
corner of his mouth to the other, sucked it tentatively, then passed the
fire end beneath his nose after the manner of a connoisseur. His
experiments exhausted, he pronounced it a "corker."

Richard conveyed Mr. Sands to his own apartments. The front window was
what Mr. Sands required. He pinned the slips to the top of the lower
sash. As the depended slips were brought with their backs to the light,
Mr. Sands showed Richard how they were in the nature of stencils, the
white light showing through in printed words. Richard was dumb; it was a
kind of prodigy. He read the stencils, beginning at the top of the one
which Mr. Sands said was the "lead."

[Illustration: It was a Kind of Prodigy]

"The report is set in minion," explained Mr. Sands, "and with this light
you can read it plain as ink."

Richard discovered the truth of what Mr. Sands averred; here indeed was
Senator Hanway's Northern Consolidated report, and as readily made out
as though printed in a book.

"This is the idea," vouchsafed Mr. Sands, who saw that Richard was warm
for explanations. "The bo