e office
for two days waiting for Jimmy, while he came in and out of the back
door, stuck his copy on the hook by stealth, and travelled only in the
alleys to get his news. One could hardly say that he was to blame for
that, either, as the photographer who paid for the item didn't say the
pedlar was a woman, and the boy was no clairvoyant.

[Illustration: And camped in the office for two days, looking for Jimmy]

One dull day he wrote a piece about the gang who played poker at night
in Red Martin's room. Jimmy said he wasn't afraid of Red, and he wasn't.
The item was popular enough, and led to a raid on the place, which
disclosed our best advertiser sitting in the game. To suppress his name
meant our shame before the town; to print it meant his--at our expense.
It was embarrassing, but it wasn't exactly the boy's fault. It was just
one of those unfortunate circumstances that come up in life. However,
the advertiser aforesaid began to hate the boy.

He must have been used to injustice all his life, for there was a
vertical line between his eyes that marked trouble. The line deepened as
he went further and further into the newspaper business; for, generally
speaking, a person who is unlucky has less to fear handling dynamite
than he has writing local items on a country paper.

A few days after the raid on the poker-room Jimmy, who had acquired a
particularly legible hand, wrote: "The hem of her skirt was trimmed with
pink crushed roses," and he was in no way to blame for the fact that the
printer accidentally put an "h" for a "k" in skirt, though the woman's
husband chased Jimmy into a culvert under Main Street and kept him there
most of the forenoon, while the cheering crowd informed the injured
husband whenever Jimmy tried to get out of either end of his prison.

The printer that made the mistake bought Jimmy a new suit of clothes, we
managed to print an apology that cooled the husband's wrath, and for ten
days, or perhaps two weeks, the boy's life was one round of joy.
Everything was done promptly, accurately and with remarkable
intelligence. He whistled at his work and stacked up more copy than the
printers could set up in type. No man ever got in or out of town without
having his name in our paper. Jimmy wrote up a railroad bond election
meeting so fairly that he pleased both sides, and reported a murder
trial so well that the lawyers for each side kept the boy's pockets full
of ten-cent cigars. The vertical wrin