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 positive and earnest. He staked his reputation—the reputation of a rising journalist!

"I swear there's something up," he said. "Get in first—that's all."

He had some reputation, I say—and he had staked it. The Daily Gunfire was sceptical but precise, and the New Paper sprang a headline "A Mermaid at last!"

You might well have thought the thing was out after that, but it wasn't. There are things one doesn't believe even if they are printed in a halfpenny paper. To find the reporters hammering at their doors, so to speak, and fended off only for a time by a proposal that they should call again; to see their incredible secret glaringly in print, did indeed for a moment seem a hopeless exposure to both the Buntings and the Sea Lady. Already they could see the story spreading, could imagine the imminent rush of intimate enquiries, the tripod strides of a multitude of cameras,