“What’s the matter?” called Mr. Newton to a man down in the street.
“The dam at Meadeville has burst,” was the reply. “Ours will go in about ten hours!”
“That means work for to-morrow,” commented the reporter.
“Hadn’t we better get out now and see what’s going on?” asked Larry.
“No, it wouldn’t do any good. There’s no immediate danger, or they would have told us. So we might as well stay in bed and rest up. The chances are we’ll not get to bed at all to-morrow night.”
“Not get to bed?”
“No,” replied the reporter. “When you get to be a real newspaper man, Larry, you’ll find that your time is the paper’s you work for. You mustn’t sleep or be awake except in the interests of the sheet. But when there’s nothing doing, get all the rest you can. You’ll need it sometimes. Working all night is nothing. That’s fun. It’s being up six nights out of seven that makes it hard. But we don’t have to do that. So go back to bed and sleep as well as you can.”
Larry tried to but he found it hard work. He listened to the rain drops and thought of what would happen when the big dam burst. This made him so wide awake that he tried to count the number of drops that fell on a tin roof, thinking the monotony of this might send him to slumber.
Finally, after admiring the calm and peaceful manner in which Mr. Newton dropped off to sleep, Larry found his eyes growing heavy. He began to dream he was swimming in a flood of waters, and trying to climb to the top of a big dam, from which he fell back with a shock that woke him up.
He aroused himself with a suddenness that startled him, to find Mr. Newton shaking him vigorously.