ise a genius--laugh at him, pity his family--till you learn how the
outside world respects him. Then--hurrah! Strike up the band, boys!
When I think how that old party has been quietly studying typhoid
fever and water supply all these years, with you bunch of hayseeds
looking down on him as a crank--I get so blamed sore at the place that
I wish I'd chucked your letter into the waste-basket when you wrote me
to come!"

"It may have been a dub of a town, Billy, but it'll be the best place
in Indiana before we get through with it," returned the editor
confidently. "But whom else did you see?"

"Ran into the Honourable Hiram Cogshell on Main Street, and he slipped
me this precious gem." Billy handed Bruce a packet of typewritten
sheets. "Carbon of his to-morrow's speech. He gave it to me, he said,
to save us the trouble of taking it down. The Honourable Hiram is
certainly one citizen who'll never go broke buying himself a bushel to
hide his light under!"

The editor glanced at a page or two of it with wearied irritation,
then tossed it back.

"Guess we'll have to print it. But weed out some of his flowers of
rhetoric."

"Pressed flowers," amended Billy. "Swipe the Honourable Hiram's copy
of 'Bartlett's Quotations' and that tremendous orator would have
nothing left but his gestures."

"How about the grand jury, Billy?" pursued the editor. "Anything doing
there?"

"Farmer down in Buck Creek Township indicted for kidnapping his
neighbour's pigs," drawled the reporter. "Infants snatched away while
fond mother slept. Very pathetic. Also that second-story man was
indicted that stole Alderman Big Bill Perkins's clothes. Remember it,
don't you? Big Bill's clothes had so much diameter that the poor,
hard-working thief couldn't sell the fruits of his industry. Pathos
there also. Guess I can spin the two out for a column."

"Spin 'em out for about three lines," returned Bruce in his abrupt
manner. "No room for your funny stuff to-day, Billy; the celebration
crowds everything else out. Write that about the Governor, and then
help Stevens with the telegraph--and see that it's carved down to the
bone." He picked up the typewritten sheets he had finished revising,
and let out a sharp growl of "Copy!"

"That's your celebration story, isn't it?" asked the reporter.

"Yes." And Bruce held it out to the "devil" who had appeared through
the doorway from the depths below.

"Wait a bit with it, Arn. The prosecuting attorney stoppe