could raise one hundred dollars during the day and he saw his
promising romance cut short just when Syrilla was beginning to lose
weight handsomely. The greeting he received when he reached Aunt
Martha Turner's was not of a sort to cheer him. Mrs. Turner met him
with a sour face.

"No, you can't go ahead with puttin' the wall-paper on this kitchen
ceilin' to-day, Mr. Gubb," she said.

"I'd like to, if I could," said Philo Gubb wistfully. "My financial
condition ain't such as to allow me to waste a day. I'm very low in a
monetary shape, right now."

Aunt Martha Turner seemed worried.

"Well," she said reluctantly, "I guess if that's the case you might as
well go ahead. I expect I'll have to be out of the house 'most all
day. If you get done before I get back, lock the kitchen door and put
the key behind a shutter."

She departed, and Philo Gubb set up his trestle, unrolled and trimmed
a strip of ceiling-paper, pasted it, and climbed his ladder. At the
top he seated himself a moment and shook his head.

He sighed and picked up the paste-covered strip of ceiling-paper, but
before he could get to his feet the kitchen door opened and "Snooks"
Turner put his head in cautiously.

"Say, Gubb, where's Aunt Martha?" he asked in a whisper.

"She's gone out," said Philo Gubb. "She won't be back for quite some
time, I guess, Snooksy."

"Good!" said Snooks, and he entered the kitchen. Some weeks before he
had met Nan Kilfillan. He was deeply in love with Nan, and Nan was a
good girl, although Aunt Martha Turner did not approve of her, because
she was "hired girl" to City Attorney Mullen. Before she had met
Snooks Nan had done her best to "make something" of "Slippery"
Williams, who was courting her then, but that task was beyond even
Nan's powers.

Snooks held a job on the "Eagle" as city reporter, with the dignified
title of City Editor, and he was making good. He got the news. He
seemed able to smell news. When there was big news in the air he would
become uneasy and feel nervous.

"I got the twitches again," he would say to the editor of the "Eagle."
"There's some big item around. I've got to get it." And he would get
it.

"She's gone out, has she?" said Snooks, when he had entered his aunt's
kitchen and asked Philo Gubb about Aunt Martha. "That's good. I wanted
to see you on a matter of business--detective business."

He put his hand in his pocket and drew out a small roll of bills. He
was not the usually neat