Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/42

 at a time, unlatched the gate, hurried down to his old desk, swore at somebody's coat lying there, threw it upon another desk, sat down and began to write like nothing in the world but a reporter with a tremendous beat, who knows only that the paper goes to press within three hours.

III Meanwhile Mr. Stone, the night city editor of The Day, had come on at 5.30 o'clock to take the desk, and the first thing Mr. White said to him was, "Billy's gone at last."

Stone took out his pipe and said, "Too bad," which was a good deal for the night city editor to say; then he put it back again and went over the assignment list with White.

The copy-editors began gathering in now and they also said " Too bad." But they had considerably more to say than that; for Sampson, the old reporter, had by this