and to the
point."

He scratched off a copy of the message and put it into Janice's eager
hand. The girl read it out loud:

"J. M. always a story-teller. Have telegraphed consular
agent at Cida for later particulars. I consider any news of
B. D. good news.
JAMES W. BUCHANAN."

"That Buchanan evidently knows the John Makepiece who is telling this
yarn," observed the telegraph operator, "and he doesn't have much
confidence in him."

"Oh, dear!" murmured the girl. "Maybe it's even worse than Makepiece
reported."

"Hardly," broke in Nelson Haley, quickly. "He intimated that your father
was surely dead. But this friend of yours at Juarez says any news at all
is good news."

"Keep your heart up, Miss," urged the telegraph operator. "And do tell
me a little something about yourself, so that I can satisfy these
insistent newspapers."

"Oh, dear, me! I don't want to get into the newspapers," cried Janice,
really disturbed by this possibility.

"But folks will be awfully interested in reading about you, Miss Day,"
urged the man; "and the newspapers are going to do more than anybody
else for you and your father in this trouble. You may make sure of
_that_."

But it was because of the operator's personal kindness that Janice
submitted to the "interview." Nelson Haley entered into the spirit of
the affair and wrote down Janice's personal history to date, just as
briefly and clearly as the girl gave it under the operator's
questioning. Young Haley added a few notes of his own, which he
explained in the operator's ear before the latter tapped out his message
to New York.

It was only when Janice saw the paper a few days later that she realized
what, between them, the school-teacher and the telegraph operator had
done. There, spread broadcast by the types, was the story of how Janice
had come to Poketown alone, a brief picture of her loneliness without
her father, something of the free reading-room Janice had been the means
of establishing, and a description of the flight down the lake on the
_Fly-by-Night_ on Christmas morning, that she might gain further
particulars of her father's fate.

It was the sort of human-interest story that newspaper readers enjoy;
but Janice was almost ashamed to appear in public for several days
thereafter!

However, this is ahead of our story.

The wait for further messages from the border was not so tedious,
because of these incidents. By and by