Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/289

 Park Row bums. My people …" He was often talking about his people now, and how distinguished their history had been, and it used to make some men laugh, and Billy had two or three fights on that score.

Then one morning he did not come down to the office (this was an afternoon paper), nor the next, nor until a week later, when he suddenly ran into the room and made a scene, trying to throw out the man who had succeeded him at the desk.

The next day, when he was sober, he came in and apologized; he apologized profusely to the whole staff, and the office boys. He was almost abject. But there was no place for him there any longer.

He got occasional jobs here and there—often on some poor little paper of small importance, which many of you never read, which Billy, in the old days of his glory, used to feel sorry for. The other newspaper men along the Row who read all the papers (and seldom anything else) did not have to be told when and where Billy Woods was back at work again. They