Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/25

Rh had gone to bed and didn't know any boiler had exploded till I woke 'em up and told them."

The leg-swinger remarked: "He was all right all the afternoon and evening. In fact, he'd been trying so hard to be good for several months, poor old Billy—but then you know his way. Probably began by deciding it was cold going down the bay on the tug."

"You're mistaken," said somebody in a confident tone from a near-by desk. This was Sampson, one of the older men, who was clipping his space from the morning paper, and had not been in the conversation before. "Billy Woods did not start in on the way down. He never drinks when out on an assignment. You know that. What's more, I've good reason for believing that a certain cur from a certain paper got him drunk on the way home after Billy had written his story in the cabin—deliberately. Let me tell you what The Herald man on that tug said to me last night." But he did not tell, for just then the city editor called out "Sampson," and this reporter