He
began giving orders. We were twenty minutes behind usual time with
the papers, but we made all the trains.
When the big Duplex was grinding out newsprint with a roar that shook
the building, the boys and girls gathered around to discuss the thing
which had happened.
The Higgins boy, saucer-eyed over the experience of being "on the
inside" during the handling of the first sizable news-story since he
had become our local reporter, voiced the interrogation on the faces
of other office newcomers.
"Ruggam," the editor explained, "is a poor unfortunate who should
have been sent to an asylum instead of the penitentiary. He killed
Mart Wiley, a deputy sheriff, at a Lost Nation kitchen-dance two
years ago."
"Where's the Lost Nation?"
"It's a term applied to most of the town of Partridgeville in the
northern part of the county--an inaccessible district back in the
mountains peopled with gone-to-seed stock and half-civilized
illiterates who only get into the news when they load up with
squirrel whisky and start a programme of progressive hell. Ruggam
was the local blacksmith."
"What's a kitchen-dance?"
"Ordinarily a kitchen-dance is harmless enough. But the Lost Nation
folks use it as an excuse for a debauch.
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