e small machine and
the broad and hairy hands which so heavily belaboured its ladylike
keys.

It was a custom with Bruce to write the big local news story of the
day himself, a feature that had proved a stimulant to his paper's
circulation and prestige. To-morrow was to be one of the proudest days
of Westville's history, for to-morrow was the formal opening of the
city's greatest municipal enterprise, its thoroughly modern
water-works; and it was an extensive and vivid account of the next
day's programme that the editor was pounding so rapidly out of his
machine for that afternoon's issue of the _Express_. Now and then, as
he paused an instant to shape an effective sentence in his mind, he
glanced through the open window beside him across Main Street to
where, against the front of the old Court House, a group of
shirt-sleeved workmen were hanging their country's colours about a
speakers' stand; then his big, blunt fingers thumped swiftly on.

He had jerked out the final sheet, and had begun to revise his story,
making corrections with a very black pencil and in a very large hand,
when there sauntered in from the general editorial room a pale, slight
young man of twenty-five. The newcomer had a reckless air, a humorous
twist to the left corner of his mouth, and a negligent smartness in
his dress which plainly had its origin elsewhere than in Westville.

The editor did not raise his eyes.

"In a minute, Billy," he said shortly.

"Nothing to hurry about, Arn," drawled the other.

The young fellow drew forward the atlas-bottomed chair, leisurely
enthroned himself upon the nations of the earth, crossed his feet upon
the window-sill, and lit a cigarette. About his lounging form there
was a latent energy like that of a relaxed cat. He gazed rather
languidly over at the Square, its sides abustle with excited
preparation. Across the fronts of stores bunting was being tacked;
from upper windows crisp cotton flags were being unscrolled. As for
the Court House yard itself, to-day its elm-shaded spaces were
lifeless save for the workmen about the stand, a litigant or two going
up the walk, and an occasional frock-coated lawyer, his vest
democratically unbuttoned to the warm May air. But to-morrow----

The young fellow had turned his head slowly toward the editor's copy,
and, as though reading, he began in an emotional, declamatory voice:

"To-morrow the classic shades of Court House Square will teem with a
tumultuous thron