Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/85

 persons before in all his life; and he went back through the noisy, hot, foul-smelling streets, thinking of the mystery of death and the sadness of desolation. Then entering the office, which seemed so thoughtlessly full of life and the interests of the living, he re ported at the desk of the night city editor. Stone, the night city editor, was reading copy, but twitched his ugly pipe, which meant, "Well, what did you get?" for this man did not believe in talking when he could help it.

The new reporter began to tell all about it. He thought it ought to make a pretty good little East Side pathetic story—the genuine unrestrained grief of the lowly; the mother crying; the father smoking and not saying much; the kind, gossipy neighbors, etc.

Without looking up, Mr. Stone asked, "Suicide or not?" and kept on running his pencil through copy.

"No," the new reporter replied, "he just fell in off the string-piece of the dock, at the foot of Rutgers Street. But it was pretty sad, I thought. They told me what a fine kid he had been, and how high he stood in his class