ge on the corner.
The curtains were down; the furniture was packed; the rugs were rolled.
The wagons came and backed up to the house and took those things that
had made a home for Blanche Devine. And when we heard that she had
bought back her interest in the House With the Closed Shutters, near the
freight depot, we sniffed.

"I knew she wouldn't last!" we said.

"They never do!" said we.

VII

THE GIRL WHO WENT RIGHT

There is a story--Kipling, I think--that tells of a spirited horse
galloping in the dark suddenly drawing up tense, hoofs bunched, slim
flanks quivering, nostrils dilated, ears pricked. Urging being of no
avail the rider dismounts, strikes a match, advances a cautious step or
so, and finds himself at the precipitous brink of a newly formed
crevasse.

So it is with your trained editor. A miraculous sixth sense guides him.
A mysterious something warns him of danger lurking within the seemingly
innocent oblong white envelope. Without slitting the flap, without
pausing to adjust his tortoise-rimmed glasses, without clearing his
throat, without lighting his cigarette--he knows.

The deadly newspaper story he scents in the dark. Cub reporter. Crusty
city editor. Cub fired. Stumbles on to a big story. Staggers into
newspaper office wild-eyed. Last edition. "Hold the presses!" Crusty
C.E. stands over cub's typewriter grabbing story line by line. Even
foreman of pressroom moved to tears by tale. "Boys, this ain't just a
story this kid's writin'. This is history!" Story finished. Cub faints.
C.E. makes him star reporter.

The athletic story: "I could never marry a mollycoddle like you, Harold
Hammond!" Big game of the year. Team crippled. Second half. Halfback
hurt. Harold Hammond, scrub, into the game. Touchdown! Broken leg. Five
to nothing. "Harold, can you ever, ever forgive me?"

The pseudo-psychological story: She had been sitting before the fire for
a long, long time. The flame had flickered and died down to a
smouldering ash. The sound of his departing footsteps echoed and
re-echoed through her brain. But the little room was very, very still.

The shop-girl story: Torn boots and temptation, tears and snears, pathos
and bathos, all the way from Zola to the vice inquiry.

Having thus attempted to hide the deadly commonplaceness of this story
with a thin layer of cynicism, perhaps even the wily editor may be
tricked into taking the leap.

* * * * *

Four