“And there’s Ward McAllister,” continued the driver, excitedly; “him as is the leader of the Four Hundred, you know.”

Andrew almost raised himself from his seat.  He stared with bulging eyes at the tired carelessly dressed elderly man with whom he had been intimate so many years.

He returned to the hotel.  His spirits were normal again.  He had taken his part in a fragment of the daily life of Newport.  As he passed through the office on his way to the elevator, the clerk beckoned to him.

“As you seem a stranger, sir,” he said, apologetically, “I thought I would introduce you to Mr. Chapman.  He’s the correspondent of several New York papers, and could tell you how to amuse yourself.”

A short thick-set amiable young man shook Andrew’s hand heartily.  Mr. Chapman was not the sort of person Andrew had gone to Newport to meet, but he was glad of any friendship, temporarily.

The two young men went out to the veranda.  Andrew proffered his new cigar-case.  The other accepted gratefully.  He was the free-lance correspondent of several New York weekly papers, and his salary was not large.  He tipped his chair back, put his feet on the railing, and confided to Webb that he hated Newport.

“I wouldn’t have come here this summer if I could have got out of it,” he said, gloomily.  “It’s my third year, and the place gets worse every season.  These people are so stuck-up there’s no approaching them for news.  Even Lancaster, who has a sort of entree because he is connected with a swagger family, admits that it’s as much as his life is worth to get anything out of them.  He’s the correspondent of the New York Eye.  What’s worse, they don’t do anything.  Here it is the third of August, and not a ball has been given—­just little things among themselves that you can’t get at.  It’s enough to drive a fellow to drink.  I’ve faked till my poor imagination is worn to a thread; the papers have to have news.  But I’ve done one big thing this summer,—­a corking beat.  Did you notice half-way down the avenue a new house surrounded by a big stone wall?  That’s the new Belhaven house.  They’d sworn that no reporter should so much as pass the gates, no paper should ever show an eager world the interior of that marble mausoleum.  The newspapers were wild.  Even Lancaster had no show.  I was bound that I’d get into that house, if I had to go as a burglar.  And I did, but not that way.  I bribed their butcher to let me dress up as his boy; took a camera, and photographed the house and grounds from the seclusion of the meat-wagon.  I flirted with the cook and got her to show me the drawing-rooms.  It was early, and the family wasn’t up.  I dodged the butler and took snap-shots.  The other newspaper men were ready to brain me.  I felt sorry for some of them, but I had joy over Lancaster.  He’d bribed the caterer and florist to keep their best bits of news for him.  A low trick that; not but what I’d do it myself if