r a hundred competitors.

But naming the fledgling was an easy matter compared with getting it out
of the nest; and it was not until the instalment of his competent staff
that Mr. Opp accomplished the task.

This important transaction took place one morning as he sat in his new
office and struggled with his first editorial. The bare room, with the
press in the center, served as news-room, press-room, publication
office, and editorial sanctum. Mr. Opp sat at a new deal table, with one
pen behind his ear, and another in his hand, and gazed for inspiration
at the brown wrapping-paper with which he had neatly covered the walls.
His mental gymnastics were interrupted by the appearance at the door of
Miss Jim Fenton and her brother Nick.

Miss Jim was an anomaly in the community, being by theory a spinster,
and by practice a double grass-widow. Capable and self-supporting, she
attracted the ne'er-do-wells as a magnet attracts needles, but having
been twice induced to forego her freedom and accept the bonds of
wedlock, she had twice escaped and reverted to her original type and
name. Miss Jim was evidently a victim of one of Nature's most economical
moods; she was spare and angular, with a long, wrinkled face surmounted
by a scant fluff of pale, frizzled hair. Her mouth slanted upward at
one corner, giving her an expression unjustly attributed to coquetry,
when in reality it was due to an innocent and pardonable pride in an
all-gold eye-tooth.

But it was her clothes that brought misunderstanding, misfortune, and
even matrimony upon Miss Jim. They were sent her by the boxful by a
cousin in the city, and the fact was unmistakable that they were clothes
with a past. The dresses held an atmosphere of evaporated frivolity;
flirtations lingered in every frill, and memories of old larks lurked in
every furbelow. The hats had a jaunty list to port, and the colored
slippers still held a dance within their soles. One old bird of paradise
on Miss Jim's favorite bonnet had a chronic wink for the wickedness he
had witnessed.

It was this wink that attracted Mr. Opp as he looked up from his arduous
labors. For a disconcerting moment he was uncertain whether it belonged
to Miss Jim or to the bird.

"Howdy, Mr. Opp," said the lady in brisk, businesslike tones. "I was
taking a crayon portrait home to Mrs. Gusty, and I just stopped in to
see if I couldn't persuade you to take my brother to help you on the
newspaper. You remember Nick, d