Thanks for sticking with this story, guys! It means a lot- especially those of you who lasted through the great hiatus. Troopers, you lot. MissT, Mermaid, and Vinyl especially!

This is the epilogue, so it don't need a disclaimer.

That was the last time I saw David Jacobs.

At first light the next morning, no more than a few hours since I had seen that shadowy figure disappear into the night, I woke and sat statue-still as a maid bound my hair in a tight coiffure for the long train ride ahead. She made no mention of the unusual numbers of rats' nests in my locks, nor the smell of cigarettes and cheap wine; neither did she remark on the back door being unlocked this morning.

I kissed the foreheads of Constance and Herbert, still deeply sleeping off the effects of late-night revelry. With that I followed my trunks out into the waiting coach and we rolled in silence the countless blocks to Grand Central Station.

From the station, I boarded a train for the North. As I pressed my forehead against the cool glass of a Sunday morning, watching the Alleghany roll past in my periphery, my thoughts strayed back to the night before. I had rarely felt so connected, so (good heavens, I was sounding like the heroine of a penny dreadful) alive. The other half may have lived differently from what I was accustomed to, entrenched as they were in a vicious cycle of poverty and closed doors, but my word, they knew how to let go and enjoy themselves. Closing my eyes I could almost conjure the aroma of a stale theater and feel the dizzying whirl of the last mazurka of the night, danced with exceptional energy if not skill by a sea of newsies and their admirers. I nearly got to the part where I looked up from the crowds into the grinning face of my gallant knight in shining armor when I sat up and gave my head an equine shake.

Nostalgia, I chided myself, was not befitting a woman of my age and position. I had a name to uphold.

But nonetheless, I would never forget that one night in the thick of the other half, or the person who brought me there.

After that last summer, I rarely returned to New York, and only saw number eleven under the cheerful light of Christmastime. South was no longer my trajectory- I went East to the Continent, then as far West as propriety could take me when I had seen all there was to see of England, France, and Italy. I took the grand tour of Europe; I persisted in reading those French novels my father had tried to confiscate. I still had the quintet of the best New York papers delivered to me every morning on my breakfast tray.

I took notice, a few years after my graduation, of an article or two in the Sun written by one D. Jacobs, and smiled quietly at the straightforward prose and opinionated, convincing paragraphs. You'll make a reporter yet, I had said years ago an ocean away. I had been right.

I followed David's progress through the ranks at the Sun, watched with lightly scandalized glee as he took a brief turn in the City room at the Banner. When the Banner folded, he published a fantastic account of its president and workers, as always staunchly supportive of New York's working people. After that, his stories became more and more infrequent and increasingly important; I had a feeling that Mr. Jacobs was on his way to being granted a position as roving reporter, covering only the most vital of breaking news.

In October 1911, twelve years and two months after my summer week among the newsboys, Father died. I idly wondered if any of the newsboys involved in the strike more than a decade past were glad of the news; my intuition told me that by now the animosity had been forgiven and forgotten. As the funeral procession slowly trundled up Jerome Avenue (a route familiar to my eyes and mind), I thought I spotted a head of curls and flashing blue eyes walking on the crowded sidewalks, one arm looped through that of a well-dressed woman and the other keeping close watch on a little boy. On my way back to the coach from the family tomb, I was quite suddenly brought back to another day at Woodlawn by an unseasonably warm wind. My black crepe was a far cry from fern-colored muslin, but a cemetery is one place that changes little for all the passage of time.

Two months after that, I was married out West, where I had been spending more and more time as the new century progressed. The Sun's Moore-Pulitzer bans seemed to me to be penned by a familiar hand, but I made no comment of it to William over our morning coffee. It might have been just my imagination.

The sapphire waters of Tahoe rippled no more than one hundred feet off the patio, and the sun, still fierce in the late December morning, sparked off the crystalline snow draped over the rocky shore.

William was bent over one of the papers, lips moving silently as he absorbed the world's news. "They've reached the South Pole, did you see that yet?"

I glanced up from the blue of the lake, not having opened the neatly folded Times before me. "No, do tell."

"I'll let you read it for yourself in a moment," he said, sipping coffee through his mustache and looking back down at the photograph of Amundsen and his fellows posing on a field of purest white. "This correspondent- Jacobs, his name is- writes a nice story, don't you think?"

FIN