riends are
entertained," said Mr. Newton, another reporter, who was told by Mr.
Emberg, the city editor, to show Dick and his chums around the newspaper
plant.

It was getting close to edition time, and they noticed, with much
amazement, how the reporters came hurrying in with the news they had
gathered; how they sat down at typewriters and rattled it off; how it
was corrected and edited; sent to the composing room in pneumatic tubes;
set up on type-setting machines that seemed almost human; the type put
into "forms" or strong steel frames; how a soft sheet of wet paper was
pressed on the type and baked by steam until it took every impression
and was the exact counterpart of a printed page.

The boys watched and saw that these baked sheets of paper, called
"matrices," were sent to the stereotyping room, where, bent into a
half-circle in a machine, they were filled with hot melted lead, which,
hardening, took every impression of the cardboard.

Then the curved metal plates, each one representing a page of the paper,
were clamped on a big press, that worked with a noise like thunder, and,
in an instant, it seemed, white paper from a big roll, which was fed it
at one end, came out printed, pasted, and folded newspapers at the other
end of the machine.

A grimy boy gathered up an armful of them, as they kept piling up at the
foot of a chute, which extended somewhere up inside the press. Mr.
Newton, who had escorted Dick and his friends about, took up one of the
journals.

"There you are!" he shouted, above the rumble and roar of the press, as
he handed Dick a paper.

The wealthy youth unfolded it. On the front page was the story of
himself and "Colonel Dendon." It was under a "scare" head, which
announced:

ATTEMPTED SWINDLE OF YOUNG
MILLIONAIRE!

SHARPER TRIES TO SELL TO DICK HAMILTON, WHO
RECENTLY INHERITED VAST WEALTH,
WORTHLESS BONDS!

DETECTIVE ACTS IN TIME

"Humph!" murmured Dick, when he saw what a big story Larry had made of
it. "If my father saw this he'd be worried."

"You're getting more famous than ever!" exclaimed Walter Mead.

"Looks so," admitted the young millionaire. "Well, I'm glad Larry got
his beat, anyhow."

And it was a beat, for, when Dick got back to the hotel, the manager
told him half the newspapers in New York had been calling him up to ask
about the story.

CHAPTER IX

A CIRCUS COMES TO TOWN

Dick and his friends went home in the big automo