every other thing connected
with it, for that matter.

"There's Jim sitting in the editor's chair," observed Thad, looking
through a dusty window.

"Must be Mr. Adoiphus Hanks, who owns and edits the _Courier_, is
out of town just at present. Say, that would just suit us to a
fraction, wouldn't it, Hugh?"

"It might make things easier for us," admitted the other; and then
they burst in on the important if diminutive Jim, who received them
with all the airs of a metropolitan editor.

"Glad to see you, boys," he told them; "just take seats, will you,
and excuse me for three minutes. I'm winding up the main editorial
for this week's issue. Hanks is out of town, and has left me in full
charge; but then that happens frequently nowadays; and, say, some
foolish people have gone so far as to say they can tell when he's
absent because, well, the paper shows it; but I tell them they are
only saying that to flatter me. Three minutes, boys, and I'll be at
your service."

Whatever it was Jim was doing on the typewriter, he continued to
pound laboriously away for about that length of time. Then finishing
he drew the sheet out, glanced over it, made some corrections, smiled
as though highly pleased, and called out to a boy who was working
a hand press to come and take it to the lone compositor, standing
at his case in a distant corner of the den.

"That'll make folks sit up and take notice I kind of think," said
Jim, swelling out his chest with an air of great importance. "Don't
ask me what it is all about, for I want it to be a surprise to the
community. Read it in tomorrow's issue of the _Weekly Courier_.
Now, what can I do for you, Thad, old scout? Anything connected
with the Scranton High baseball team you want written up for next
week? I'm always ready to favor the boys, because I used to play
ball myself away back."

Hugh would have liked to laugh, but he refrained, not wishing to
offend Jim, who was evidently suffering from an overweening sense
of his own importance, since he had graduated into a temporary occupancy
of the editorial chair. Jim was considerably short of twenty at that,
so it could not have been more than a year or two since he used to
play ball, and train with the other boys of Scranton High.

Thad got busy, and began to tell how they had first ran across the
strange hobo in his camp, cooking a meal. He continued the story with
a description of how the long wandering Brother Lu had been so