you stick at it too long," murmured the other. "Back to the farm for mine."

It was long after midnight when these two put on their coats and bade the city editor's desk a perfunctory "Good-night." They left Henry Harding Seeley still slumped in his chair, writing with dogged industry.

"He's dead tired, you can see that," commented one of the pair as they headed for Broadway; "but, as usual, he is grinding out stuff for the Sunday sheet after hours. He must need the extra coin mighty bad. I came back for my overcoat at four the other morning, and he was still pegging away just like that."

Other belated editors and reporters of The Chronicle staff drifted toward the elevator, until the gray-haired copy-reader was left alone in the city room as if marooned. Writing steadily as if he were a machine warranted to turn out so many words an hour, Seeley urged his pencil until the last page was finished. Then he read and corrected the "story," slipped it through a slit in a door marked "Sunday Editor," and trudged out, while the tower clock was striking three.

Instead of seeking the chop house wherein the vivacious and tireless youth of the staff were wont to linger over supper, he turned into a small café as yet unfrequented by the night-owls of journalism. Seeley was a beaten man, and he preferred to nurse his wounds in a morbid isolation. His gait and aspect were those of a man on the defensive, as if hostile circumstances had driven him into a corner, where he was making his last stand.

Through the years of his youth as a reporter of rare ability and resourcefulness, Seeley had never spared himself. Burning the candle at both ends, with a vitality which had seemed inexhaustible, he had won step after step of promotion until, at forty, he was made managing editor of that huge and hard-driven organization, the New York Chronicle. For five years of racking responsibility Henry Harding Seeley had been able to maintain the pace demanded of his position.

Then came an error of judgment -a midnight decision demanded of a fagged mind- and his O.K. was scrawled upon the first sheet of a story of embezzlement in Wall Street. By an incredible blunder, the name of the fugitive cashier was coupled with that of the wrong bank. Publication of The Chronicle story started a terrific run on this innocent institution, which won its libel suit against the newspaper in the amount of one hundred thousand dollars.

The managing editor, two reporters, and the copy-reader who had handled the fatal manuscript were swept out of the building by one cyclonic order from the owner thereof. Henry Seeley accepted his indirect responsibility for the disaster in grim, manly fashion, and straightway sought another berth befitting his journalistic station. But his one costly slip was more than a nine-days' scandal along Park Row, and other canny proprietors were afraid that he might hit them in the very vital regions of their pockets. Worse than this, his confidence in himself had suffered mortal damage. The wear and tear of his earlier years had left him with little reserve power, and he went to pieces in the face of adverse fortune.

"Worked out at forty-five," was the verdict of his friends, and they began to pity him.

The will to succeed had been broken, but Seeley might have rallied had not his wife died during the ebb tide of his affairs. She had walked hand in hand with him since his early twenties, her faith in him had been his mainstay, and his happiness in her complete and beautiful. Bereft of her when he stood most in need of her, he seemed to have no more fight in him, and, drifting from one newspaper office to another, he finally eddied into his old "shop" as a drudging copy-reader and an object of sympathy to a younger generation.

There was one son, strong, bright, eager; and by dint of driving his eternally wearied brain overtime, the father had been able to send him to Yale, his own alma mater. More or less pious

deception had led young Ernest Seeley to believe that his father had regained much of his old-time prestige with The Chronicle, and that he had a hand in guiding its editorial destinies. The lad was a Freshman, tremendously absorbed in the activities of the autumn term, and his father was content that he should be so hedged about by the interests of the campus world as to have small time or thought for the grizzled, taciturn toiler in New York. This was the kind of man that trudged heavily into the little German café of an early morning after his long night's slavery at the copy-desk. His mind, embittered and sensitive to slights like a raw nerve, was brooding over the open taunt of the night city editor, who had been an office boy under him in the years gone by. From force of habit, he seated himself at a table in the rear of the room, shunning the chance of having to face an acquaintance. Unfolding a copy of the city edition, which had been laid on his desk damp from the pressroom, Seeley scanned the front page with scowling uneasiness, as if fearing to find some blunder of his own handiwork. Then he turned to the sporting page and began to read the football news.

His son Ernest had been playing as a substitute with the university eleven, an achievement which stirred the father's pride without moving his enthusiasm. And the boy, chilled by his father's indifference, had said little about it during his infrequent visits to New York. But now the elder Seeley sat erect, and his stolid countenance was almost animated as he read, under a New Haven date line:

The Yale confidence of winning the game with Princeton tomorrow has been shattered, and gloom enshrouds the camp of the Elis tonight. Collins, the great fullback, who has been the keystone of Yale's offensive game, was taken to the infirmary late this afternoon. He complained of feeling ill after the signal practice yesterday; fever developed overnight, and the consulting physicians decided that he must be operated on for appendicitis without delay. His place in the Princeton game will be filled by Ernest Seeley, the Freshman who has been playing a phenomenal game in the backfield, but who is so lacking in experience that the coaches are all at sea tonight.

The elder Seeley wiped his glasses as if not sure that he had read aright.

Ernest had seemed to him no more than a sturdy infant, and here he was, on the eve of a championship football battle, picked to fight for the "old Blue." The father's career at Yale had been a most honorable one. He too had played on the eleven and had helped to win two desperate contests against Princeton. But all this belonged to a part of his life which was dead and done for. He had not achieved in after years what Yale expected of him, and his record there was with his buried memories.

Supper was forgotten while Henry Seeley wondered whether he really wanted to go to New Haven to see his boy play. Many of his old friends and classmates would be there and he did not wish to meet them.

And it stung him to the quick as he reflected, "I should be very happy to see him win, but — but to see him whipped! I couldn't brace and comfort him. And supposing it breaks his heart to be whipped, as it has broken mine? No, I won't let myself think that. I'm a poor Yale man and a worse father, but I couldn't stand going up there today."

Even more humiliating was the thought that he would shrink from asking leave of the city editor. Saturday was not his "day off," and he so greatly hated to ask favors at the office that the possibility of being rebuffed was more than he was willing to face.

Into his unhappy meditations broke a boisterous hail, "Diogenes Seeley, as I live. Why, you old rascal, I thought you were dead or something. Glad I didn't get foolish and go to bed. Here, waiter, get busy."

Seeley was startled, and he looked much more distressed than rejoiced as he lumbered from his table to grasp the outstretched hand of a classmate. The opera hat of this Mr. Richard Giddings was cocked at a rakish angle, his blue eyes twinkled good cheer and youthful hilarity, and his aspect was utterly care-free.

"How are you, Dick?" said Seeley, with an unusual smile

which singularly brightened his face. "You don't look a day older than when I last saw you. Still cutting coupons for a living?"

"Oh, money is the least of my worries," gayly rattled Mr. Giddings. "Been doing the heavy society act tonight, and on my way home found I needed some sauerkraut to tone up my jaded system. By Jove, Harry, you're as gray as a badger. This newspaper game must be bad for the nerves. Lots of fellows have asked me about you. Never see you at the University Club; nobody sees you anywhere. Remarkable how a man can lose himself right here in New York. Still running The Chronicle, I suppose."

"I'm still in the old shop, Dick," replied Seeley, glad to be rid of this awkward question. "But I work nearly all night and sleep most of the day, and am like a cog in a big machine that never stops grinding."

"Shouldn't do it. Wears a man out," and Mr. Giddings sagely nodded his head. "Course you are going up to the game today. Come along with me. Special car with a big bunch of your old pals inside. They'll be tickled to death to find I've dug you out of your hole. Hello! Is that this morning's, paper? Let me look at the sporting page. Great team at New Haven, they tell me. What's the latest odds?"

The alert eye of Richard Giddings swept down the New Haven dispatch like lightning.

With a grievous outcry he smote the table and shouted, "Collins out of the game? Great Scott, Harry, that's awful news. And a green Freshman going to fill his shoes at the last minute. I feel like weeping, honest I do. Who the deuce is this Seeley? Any kin of yours? I suppose not or you would have bellowed it at me before this."

"He is my only boy, Dick," and the father held up his head with a shadow of his old manner. "I didn't know he had the ghost of a show to make the team until I saw this dispatch."