Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/291

 Some old friends of Billy Woods had decided to send him off to an alcoholism cure. They argued that it would not hurt him, and might prove less expensive for them selves. Woods was full of the idea, and said it would be just the thing.

Two of them went to the train with him, and he was as pleased and delighted as a boy starting off for a month's camping; he shook their hands effusively, even whimpered a little at how good they were to him, and then blinking his eyes said, solemnly, for the fifth time, that he sincerely believed he was going to be cured. "And if I'm not, you know," he suddenly called back, as the train started, "I'll write a special about the thing, showing it up for a fake and all that."

"I wonder," said one of his friends, as the rear car grew smaller, "if he would take the assignment to cover his father's funeral?"

"If he wasn't too drunk," said the other,