d then we'll make a 'get-away.'

"Hello! . . . Yes. I'm here yet. You didn't think I'd run from such
a little subsidized, turncoat rag of a newspaper, did you? . . . Have
me inside of forty-eight hours? Say, will you quit being funny? Now,
you let grown men alone and attend to your business of hunting up
divorce cases and street-car accidents and printing the filth and
scandal that you make your living by. Good-by, old boy--sorry I
haven't time to call on you. I'd feel perfectly safe in your sanctum
asinorum. Tra-la!"

"He's as mad as a cat that's lost a mouse," said Kernan, hanging up
the receiver and coming out. "And now, Barney, my boy, we'll go to
a show and enjoy ourselves until a reasonable bedtime. Four hours'
sleep for me, and then the west-bound."

The two dined in a Broadway restaurant. Kernan was pleased with
himself. He spent money like a prince of fiction. And then a weird
and gorgeous musical comedy engaged their attention. Afterward there
was a late supper in a grillroom, with champagne, and Kernan at the
height of his complacency.

Half-past three in the morning found them in a corner of an all-night
cafe, Kernan still boasting in a vapid and rambling way, Woods
thinking moodily over the end that had come to his usefulness as an
upholder of the law.

But, as he pondered, his eye brightened with a speculative light.

"I wonder if it's possible," he said to himself, "I won-der if it's
pos-si-ble!"

And then outside the cafe the comparative stillness of the early
morning was punctured by faint, uncertain cries that seemed mere
fireflies of sound, some growing louder, some fainter, waxing and
waning amid the rumble of milk wagons and infrequent cars. Shrill
cries they were when near--well-known cries that conveyed many
meanings to the ears of those of the slumbering millions of the great
city who waked to hear them. Cries that bore upon their significant,
small volume the weight of a world's woe and laughter and delight
and stress. To some, cowering beneath the protection of a night's
ephemeral cover, they brought news of the hideous, bright day; to
others, wrapped in happy sleep, they announced a morning that would
dawn blacker than sable night. To many of the rich they brought a
besom to sweep away what had been theirs while the stars shone; to
the poor they brought--another day.

All over the city the cries were starting up, keen and sonorous,
heralding the chances that the slipping of one cogw