Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/86

 and all that, and they took me in and showed me the body, with the medal he had won at school still around his neck, and the ribbon all wet and faded. He was to have spoken a piece, they said, next Friday at the school exercises. He had been rehearsing only an hour before. While they told me, the other kids, the ones he used to play with, were calling to each other outside in the street below, and"

The night city editor looked annoyed. "Never mind," he said, and turned over another sheet of copy.

Linton hesitated. "Well, sha'n't I write anything?" he asked.

Mr. Stone finished with the paragraph he was editing, then looked up. "Hell, no," he said; "hundreds of 'em fall in every summer. But a suicide at ten would have been good news, worth, perhaps, a column; for that is unusual. You see the distinction." So did the cub reporter now.

This young man had thought that, with a college and university training and some experience at amateur scribbling, he ought