.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

=================
MARK TIDD, EDITOR
=================

.. meta::
   :PG.Title: Mark Tidd, Editor
   :PG.Id: 41964
   :PG.Released: 2013-02-01
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Roger Frank
   :DC.Creator: Clarence Budington Kelland
   :DC.Title: Mark Tidd, Editor
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1917
   :coverpage: images/cover.jpg

.. clearpage::

.. pgheader::

.. role:: xlg
   :class: x-large

.. role:: lg
   :class: larger

.. role:: sm
   :class: smaller

.. role:: sc
   :class: small-caps

.. style:: figure.illustration
   :width: 50%
   :align: center

.. clearpage::

.. _`Plunk and tallow were there looking dilapidated and frightened`:

.. figure:: images/illus-fpc.jpg
   :figclass: illustration
   :align: center
   :alt: Plunk and Tallow were there looking dilapidated and frightened

   Plunk and Tallow were there looking dilapidated and frightened

.. clearpage::

.. container:: titlepage center white-space-pre-line

    :xlg:`MARK TIDD, EDITOR`

    .. vspace:: 1

    BY

    .. vspace:: 1

    :lg:`CLARENCE BUDINGTON KELLAND`

    .. vspace:: 1

    author of

    .. vspace:: 1

    “Mark Tidd” “Mark Tidd in the Backwoods”
    “Mark Tidd’s Citadel” etc.

    .. vspace:: 2

    ILLUSTRATED

    .. vspace:: 2

    HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

    NEW YORK AND LONDON

.. clearpage::

.. container:: plainpage center white-space-pre-line

    Mark Tidd, Editor

    Copyright, 1917, by Harper & Brothers

    Printed in the United States of America

.. clearpage::

.. container:: plainpage noindent white-space-pre-line

    ILLUSTRATIONS

    `Plunk and tallow were there looking dilapidated and frightened`_

    `We went to selling papers as hard as we could, and before noon we were cleaned out`_

    `“Huh!” says the second man, and we recognized him as the man with the black gloves`_

    `Jethro just rushed at us and grabbed a-holt of Rock, rough-like`_

.. clearpage::

CHAPTER I
=========

“Binney,” says Mark Tidd to me, “the
Wicksville *Trumpet* is b-b-busted.”

“Well,” says I, “it’s been cracked for quite a
spell. It hain’t been tootin’ loud enough to
notice for a year.”

“Used to be a g-good newspaper once,” says
Mark.

“Yes—once,” says I, “but not more ’n once.
That hain’t any record. If I’d been gettin’ out
a paper fifty-two times a year for twenty years
I bet I could ’a’ made more ’n one of those times
a good one.”

Mark looked at me sudden out of his little
eyes that had to sort of *peek* up over his fat
cheeks. “Binney,” says he, “you hain’t as useless
as I calc’lated. That’s an idea.”

“Oh,” says I, “is that what it is? I sort of
figgered maybe it was a notion.”

Mark turned the whole of him around so he
could face Plunk Smalley and Tallow Martin,
who were standing behind him. By rights you
ought to have a turn-table to move Mark around
on, like they have for locomotives. He’s ’most
as heavy as a locomotive, and when he talks
sometimes it sounds like a locomotive pulling a
load up-hill, snorting and puffing—he stutters so.

“Fellows,” says he, “this Binney Jenks is
g-g-gettin’ so he talks like a minstrel show.
Makes reg’lar j-jokes one right after another.
Looks l-like he hain’t got time to be sensible any
more.”

“But what’s the idea?” says Tallow.

“Want to talk to my father first,” says Mark.
“C-come on.”

Mark’s father didn’t use to have any money
at all. He just sat around inventing things and
reading Gibbon’s *Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire*. First he’d invent a little, and then
he’d read a little, and it was a wonder he didn’t
get the two mixed up. But finally he up and
invented a turbine-engine, and it made such a
pile of money for him that he didn’t need to do
a thing but read Gibbon and carry bushel-baskets
of dollars to the bank every little while.

Usually when a man goes and gets rich all of
a sudden there’s some difference in him. He
builds him a big house and hires a lot of folks
to brush his clothes and make his beds and cook
chicken for him three meals a day. But not
Mr. Tidd. You wouldn’t ever think he had a
cent more than he used to. He kept his little
machine-shop in the barn, and wore overalls
mostly—when he didn’t get on his Sunday suit
by mistake. He was as like as not to do that
very thing, if Mark’s mother didn’t keep her
eye on him. He was a fine kind of a man, but
he couldn’t remember things for a cent. If Mrs.
Tidd sent him to the grocery for a bottle of
vanilla, he’d like as not bring home a bag of
onions. As far as he’d get with remembering,
you see, would be that he wanted something with
a smell to it.

Mrs. Tidd was fine, too. She scolded quite
considerable, but that was just make-believe.
If you’d come in sudden and tell her you were
hungry and wanted a piece of bread-and-butter
she’d sort of frown, and say you couldn’t have it
and that it wasn’t good for boys to be stuffing
themselves between meals—and then, most
likely, she’d call you back and give you a piece of
pie.

Getting rich hadn’t changed her, either. Once
she tried keeping a hired girl, but it only lasted
a week. She claimed it was more work
following the girl around and saving what she wasted
than it was to do the work itself.

Well, we hustled up to Mark’s house and went
back to his father’s shop. Mr. Tidd, in greasy
overalls, sat right smack in the middle of the
floor, reading a book that looked like it was
pretty close to worn out. We didn’t have to
ask what it was—it was Gibbon. He didn’t
need to read it; he could have *recited* it if he’d
a mind to.

“Hello, pa,” says Mark.

Mr. Tidd looked up sort of vague, as if he
wondered who this stranger could be. Then he
says: “Howdy, Marcus Aurelius. I was hopin’
maybe you’d drop in. Young eyes is better ’n
old ones. Take a sort of a kind of a look around
to see if you can find a chunk of lead—about
four inches square and six inches long. Pretty
hefty it was. Don’t see how I come to mislay
it.”

We looked and looked, and no lead was anywhere
to be found. But Mark did find a
package with two pounds of butter in it.

“What’s the b-b-butter for, pa?” he asked.

“Why,” says Mr. Tidd, scratching his head,
“why, seems to me like your ma sent me after
that butter. Guess I must ’a’ fetched it in and
clean forgot it.”

“Um!” says Mark, and out of the shop he
went. In two minutes he came back, lugging
the chunk of lead.

“Where’d you git it, Marcus Aurelius?” says
Mr. Tidd.

“In the ice-b-box,” says Mark. “Boon’s I
see that b-butter I knew right off where the lead
was. You got the lead same time you did the
butter, didn’t you, pa?”

“Yes,” says Mr. Tidd.

Mark nodded his head like he’d known it all
along. “Sure,” says he, “and you p-p-put the
lead in the ice-box and fetched the butter out
to the shop.”

“I swan!” says Mr. Tidd. “I calc’late your
ma ’u’d been some s’prised if she started spreadin’
bread, eh?” He chuckled and chuckled, and so
did we.

“Pa,” says Mark, when we quit laughing,
“there was s-s-somethin’ I wanted to talk over
with you.”

“Go ahead,” says Mr. Tidd.

“I got the idea from Binney,” says Mark.

“Huh!” says I, “I hain’t had any ideas this
week.”

“Your b-best ideas,” says Mark, “is the ones
you don’t know you have.”

“What’s the idee?” asked Mr. Tidd.

“I’m thinkin’,” says Mark, “of becomin’ an
editor.”

“Sho!” says Mr. Tidd. He was surprised,
and I guess maybe we three boys weren’t surprised,
too! But if you’re around much with
Mark Tidd you’ve got to get used to it. He’s
always surprising you; it’s a regular business
with him.

“What you goin’ to be editor of?” says I.

“The Wicksville *Trumpet*—if pa’s willin’,”
says he.

I grinned. I almost laughed out loud.
“Shucks!” says I.

“I’ll bet he can do it,” says Plunk Smalley.

Mark didn’t pay any attention to us, but just
talked to Mr. Tidd. “The paper’s b-b-busted,”
says he, stuttering for all that was in him,
“and it’s goin’ to be s-s-sold at s-sheriff’s
sale. I figger it’ll go cheap. Now, pa, can’t
you make out to buy it for us?” Mind how
he said *us*? That’s the kind of a fellow he was.
If you were a friend of his he stuck to you, and
whatever he started you could be in if you
wanted to.

“Um!” says Mr. Tidd. “A newspaper’s a
mighty important thing, Marcus Aurelius. I
don’t call to mind that Gibbon mentions any of
’em in this book, but they’re important jest
the same. Figger you could make out to run it
so’s not to do any harm?”

“Yes, pa,” says Mark.

“I’ll talk it over with your ma,” says Mr.
Tidd. That was always the way with him. He
had to talk over with Mrs. Tidd every last
thing he did, if it wasn’t anything more important
than digging worms to go fishing. Yes,
sir, he’d ask her what corner of the garden she
thought was most likely for worms, and she’d
tell him, and nobody could get him to dig anywheres
else, either.

We all went traipsing into the kitchen, where
Mrs. Tidd was baking a batch of fried-cakes.

“Git right out of here,” she says. “I’m
busy. Won’t have you underfoot. Git right
out.”

“Now, ma,” says Mr. Tidd, “we wasn’t after
fried-cakes—though one wouldn’t go bad at this
minute. We want to talk newspaper.”

“Go talk it to somebody else,” says Mrs.
Tidd. “What about newspapers?” Now wasn’t
that just like her? First tell us to talk to somebody
else, and then ask about it in the same
breath. “Marcus Aurelius Fortunatus Tidd,
you keep your hands off’n them fried-cakes,”
she said, sharp-like.

“Why,” says Mr. Tidd, “Marcus Aurelius
wants I should buy the Wicksville *Trumpet* for
him and the boys.”

“Nonsense!” says Mrs. Tidd, with a sniff,
handing two crisp, brown fried-cakes to each of
us. “Nonsense!”

“Ma,” says Mark, “it’s goin’ to be s-s-sold by
the sheriff. Then there won’t be any more paper
here. How’ll you ever git along without the
p-p-p-personals to read?”

“Nonsense!” says Mrs. Tidd again.

“We can b-buy it dirt cheap,” says Mark,
“and we can run it and m-make money while
we’re doin’ it, and sell out after a while and
m-make a profit.”

“What you’d make,” says Mrs. Tidd, “would
be monkeys of yourselves. No use arguin’ with
me. You can’t doit.” She turned her back and
dropped some more cakes into the grease.
“How much you calc’late it’ll cost?” says she.

“Two-three h-hunderd dollars,” says Mark.

“Jest be throwin’ it away,” says Mrs. Tidd.
“Now clear out. I don’t want to hear another
word about it.”

We turned and went out. Before we were off
the back stoop she came to the door. “You go
to Lawyer Jones,” says she, “and have him do
the buyin’. Hain’t one of you fit to dicker for a
cent’s worth of dried fish.”

Mark he looked at me and winked. He knew
his ma pretty well, and so did we; but this time
I thought she meant what she said.

We all hurried down to Lawyer Jones’s office
and told him about it. He acted like he thought
Mr. Tidd was crazy, and he said it was an outrage
to put the control of a Moulder of Public
Opinion—that’s what he called a newspaper—?
into the hands of harum-scarum boys. But all
the same he chuckled a little and says he figured
Wicksville was in for stirring times and he was
glad he was alive to watch what was going to
happen.

“Tidd,” said Lawyer Jones, when we were
through talking about the paper, “did you know
Henry Wigglesworth died last night?”

“No,” says Mr. Tidd, looking as if he didn’t
quite know who Henry Wigglesworth was. But
we boys knew Mr. Wigglesworth was ’most as
rich as Mr. Tidd, so folks said. He owned a
great big farm—hundreds of acres of it—just
outside of town, and he was one of the directors
of the bank and of the electric-light company.
Altogether, folks believed he must have pretty
close to a quarter of a million dollars, and that’s
a heap, I can tell you.

Everybody knew Mr. Wigglesworth, but not
many were acquainted with him. What I
mean by acquainted is what we call so in Wicksville.
It means you stop to talk with him, and
drop in at his house and stay to dinner if you
want to, and go to help when his horse gets sick,
and ask him to come help if you get in some kind
of a pickle, that’s being acquainted. Well,
nobody I know of was that way with Mr.
Wigglesworth. I don’t know as I ever heard of
a man that had been inside Mr. Wigglesworth’s
big house, or that had had Mr. Wigglesworth in
his house.

He wasn’t exactly mean. No, he wasn’t
that. He was just big, and stern-looking, and
dignified, and acted like he wanted folks to
let him alone. Mark said to me one day
that he acted like he was always sorry about
something, but I don’t see what made Mark
think so. Anyhow, folks were afraid of him
and let him alone, which, probably, was just
what he wanted. But he was talked about considerable,
you can bet.

The way he lived all alone, with just one man
that did his cooking and helped take care of the
big house, made folks talk, because it was queer.
Come to think about it, everything about that
house of Mr. Wigglesworth’s was queer. Sort
of spooky, I’d call it.

And now he was dead.

“Yes, sir,” said Lawyer Jones, “he’s dead and
gone. I was called up there before daylight,
Tidd, and what d’you suppose I found in the
house?”

“Wa-al,” says Mr. Tidd, “I dunno ’s I’d be
prepared to state.”

“A boy,” says Lawyer Jones, and looked at
us with the kind of expression a man wears when
he expects he’s going to startle you. And he
did it, all right.

“A b-boy!” says Mark Tidd.

“A boy,” says Lawyer Jones again. “About
fifteen, I calc’late he is.”

“Who is he?” says Mark.

“That,” says Lawyer Jones, “is what I’d
give ten dollars to find out.”

“Didn’t you ask him?” says Tallow.

“He didn’t know himself,” says Lawyer
Jones.

“Shucks!” says I, not meaning to be disrespectful.

“It’s the truth,” says Lawyer Jones. “Didn’t
know who he was nor what for he was in Henry
Wigglesworth’s house. Says his first name is
Rock and that he didn’t ever have a last name.
Just Rock. Says a man named Peterkin brought
him here four days ago, and left him. Says
Wigglesworth never spoke to him, but just come
sneakin’ in one night after he was in bed, with a
lamp in his hand, and stood looking down at
him. The boy says he pretended he was asleep.
That’s all there is to it, and I wish I had an idee
what it all means.”

I looked at Mark Tidd. His little eyes were
twinkling the way they do when he’s all wrought
up and interested, and his lips were pressed
together so they looked kind of white. You
could see he was ’most eaten up with curiosity.
But he didn’t ask any questions.

In a few minutes we went out and walked
back to Mr. Tidd’s shop, where we all sat down
to talk things over.

“R-reg’lar mystery,” says Mark.

“Can’t make no head or tail to it,” says
Tallow.

And that’s what Wicksville in general decided—that
they couldn’t make head nor tail
to it. It gave everybody in town something
to talk about and figure over.

When the Man With the Black Gloves came to
town and Henry Wigglesworth’s will was found,
folks puzzled more than ever.

But we boys had other fish to fry—except
Mark. I guess he had the Wigglesworth
mystery more in his mind than he did the
Wicksville *Trumpet*. But after the next
morning he had to think more about the *Trumpet*,
for Lawyer Jones bid it in for us at the
sheriff’s sale of three hundred and thirty-two
dollars—and Mark Tidd was a real, live, untamed
editor.

CHAPTER II
==========

Mr. Tidd went along with us when we took
possession of the Wicksville *Trumpet*. He
headed straight for the room where the machinery
was, Gibbon’s *Decline and Fall* sticking
out of his pocket. Which one interested him
first would have him for the morning—so Mark
began to talk printing-press right off. Mr. Tidd
went and looked it over and sniffed in a gentle,
mild-mannered sort of way.

It *wasn’t* much of a press, I expect. You
worked it with a big crank, like turning a coffee-grinder.
We boys had seen it done lots of times,
for we’d hung around the printing-office more
or less, and sometimes we’d helped fold papers
and such things. So we had *some* experience.
Some was about all we had, though. We knew
as much about running a newspaper as a man
that’s picked a sliver out of his finger knows
about surgery.

Mr. Tidd shucked off his coat and started
prodding around in the insides of the press.

Mark motioned to us and we sneaked out into
the office.

“Now,” says Mark, “we c-c-commence. I’m
editor and you f-fellows are everything else.”

“What else is there?” says I. “I want to pick
out a good job.”

“You can be assistant b-business manager,”
says Mark.

“Assistant?” says I. “Who’s the real thing?”

“Me,” says Mark.

“Huh!” says I.

“You’re a reporter, too,” says he. “You and
Plunk and T-Tallow.”

“What’s my job?” says Tallow.

“You’re a-a-assistant foreman of the pressroom,”
says Mark.

“Huh! Who’s foreman?”

“Me,” says Mark.

“What job have you got that I can be assistant
to?” says Plunk.

“You’re assistant circulation manager,” says
he.

“All we got to do is be those things you’ve
said, and reporters besides?” says I.

“That, and hustle for ads., and help run the
press, and fold papers, and learn to set type, and
clean up, and help l-l-lick folks that come in to
l-lick the editor, and run the job press, and
collect money, and get subscribers, and d-d-drum
up printin’ jobs. When you hain’t got anythin’
else to d-do, you can be l-lookin’ for news.”

“Too much loafin’ about this to suit me,”
says Tallow.

“Say,” says Plunk, “how *does* a newspaper
make money, anyhow?”

“It d-don’t,” says Mark. “Anyhow old
Rogers always said so; but it t-tries to make
money by gettin’ folks to subscribe, and by
havin’ f-folks advertise, and by doin’ printin’
jobs—like tickets for the Congregational Young
Ladies’ Auxiliary Annual Chicken-Pie Supper.”

“How many subscribers did the *Trumpet*
have when it busted?” says I.

“Hunderd and t-twenty-six,” says Mark.
“And listen to this, you f-fellows, we’ve got to
have a thousand.”

“Huh!” says I. “You’ll have to git a few
dozen fam’lies to move in first.”

“Yes,” says Plunk, “and about that type-settin’—who’s
goin’ to teach it to us?”

Mark scratched his head at that. Who *was*
going to teach us how to do it? But that was
a worry that didn’t last long. We found a
bridge to cross that difficulty and the name of
it was Tecumseh Androcles Spat. He came in
through the door that very minute.

He looked like Abraham Lincoln in his shirtsleeves.
Tall he was, and bony, and he hadn’t
any coat on, and he did have one of those old
flat-brimmed silk hats.

He looked at us a moment and then says:

“Do I find myself standing in the editorial
sanctum of one of those bulwarks of liberty and
free speech—the local newspaper?”

“Right on the edge of it,” says Mark.

“Where then, may I ask, is that great and
good man, the editor?”

Mark sort of puffed out his chest and looked
important.

“I am the editor,” says he.

The tall man looked sort of taken back, but
just the same he took off his hat with a sweep.

“I greet you sir,” he said. “You see before
you no less a person than Tecumseh Androcles
Spat. From my earliest youth the smell of
printer’s ink has been in my nose. My services
have been sought, obtained, and finally dispensed
with in no less than one hundred and seventy-four
printing establishments. I desire to round
out the number and make it a full century and
three-quarters. Therefore, I apply to you for
employment.”

“Can you set type?” says Mark, beginning to
look cheerful.

“Stick type? Can Tecumseh Androcles Spat
stick type? My young friend, my first tooth
was cut on a quoin; I learned my letters at the
case; at the immature age of seven—an infant
prodigy, with all modesty I say it—I could set
the most complicated display. To-day, in my
maturity, you perceive me unrivaled in my
profession. I am the Compleat Printer.”

“You can have a j-job,” says Mark, “but I
dunno if you’ll ever get your wages.”

“No matter, no matter. I am accustomed to
that. Give me but a corner to slumber in, food
for my stomach, tobacco for my pipe, and my
soul is at peace.”

“You’re hired,” says Mark.

“Where’s your coat?” says I.

“In useful service, my young friend. It hangs
from crossed sticks in the midst of a garden
patch a mile or more away. It was a lovely
garden patch wherein grew peas, string-beans,
luscious cabbages, fragrant onions. But it was
being destroyed. The birds of the air descended
upon it in thousands. I looked, I comprehended.
What a pity, said I. So, to avert further depredations,
I stripped my coat, hung it from crossed
sticks, and stood it in the midst of the garden
patch. The garden needed it worse than I.
Each time I gaze upon my uncoated arms I say
to myself, ‘Tecumseh Androcles Spat is doing
his part to preserve the nation’s food.’”

“He talks like he was a lot educated,” says
Plunk.

Tecumseh Androcles overheard him. “Educated.
Ah, indeed. Have I not in my day set
type for every page of Goober’s Grammar,
Mills’s Spelling Book, to say nothing of histories,
philosophies, dictionaries. But most important
of all, almanacs. Young gentlemen, I have set
no less than ten almanacs from beginning to end.
What university, I ask you, can equip you with
the facts contained in a family almanac?”

“You’ll n-n-need all you know around here,”
Mark says, with a grin. “We just bought this
p-paper at sheriff’s sale, and we’ve got the
whole business to learn.”

“Good! Splendid! You’re in luck. Tecumseh
Androcles Spat is the man to teach you.
Where’ll I begin?”

“You might go out in the shop and l-look
around. Sort of get the lay of the land,” says
Mark.

He hung his silk hat on a hook and, in the
most pompous, dignified way you ever saw, he
stalked out into the press-room.

“Now for b-business,” says Mark. “First
thing ’s to get some s-subscribers. Folks’ll
take the *Trumpet* if they know it’s goin’ to
amount to s-somethin’. We’ve got to tell ’em.”

“How?” says I.

“By talkin’ it, singin’ it, w-whistlin’ it and
p-playin’ it on your mouth-organ,” says Mark,
with a grin. “Also by printin’ it. We’ll get
out some hand-bills—and some bigger bills to
stick on fences and things. I’ll get up the
bills. While I’m doin’ it you fellows go out
and see what you can l-learn from Tecumseh
Androcles.”

So Mark sat down to his desk and got a pencil
and commenced scratching his head. The rest
of us went out into the other room—and there
was Mr. Tidd and Tecumseh Androcles in a
regular old argument. Both of them had forgot
all about working.

“’Tain’t so,” Mr. Tidd said, as loud and
excited as he was capable of. “There hain’t no
book got more solid and useful knowledge in it
than Gibbon’s *Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire*. It’s better ’n the whole kit and bundle
of the rest of the books in the nation.”

“My friend,” said Tecumseh, “your view is
narrow, not to say biased. I have read the
volumes you praise. Without doubt there is
merit in them. Oh, without doubt. But as
compared to that marvelous book, Izaak
Walton’s *Compleat Angler*, it is the nickering
of a match to the shining of the noonday sun.”

“*Angler*,” says Mr. Tidd, disgusted as could
be.

“Yes, *Angler*,” says Tecumseh.

“Huh!” says Mr. Tidd.

“Do not snort at Izaak Walton,” roared Tecumseh.
“I will not stand by to see it done.”

“Then don’t go belittlin’ Gibbon,” says Mr.
Tidd.

“Have you read *The Compleat Angler*?”
shouted Tecumseh.

“No,” says Mr. Tidd, more warlike than I
thought he had it in him to be, “nor I hain’t
read the Compleat Fly-catcher, nor the Compleat
Cold-catcher, nor—?”

“Sir!” yelled Tecumseh, reaching as if to
take off his coat and finding it was off. It sort
of surprised him, I guess, but he got over it and
shook his fist under Mr. Tidd’s nose. He quit
talking educated and careful, too—just for that
minute.

“Your Gibbon wasn’t nothin’ but a flea on
Walton’s collar,” says he.

It looked like there was going to be a regular
rumpus, so I sort of stepped up and says:

“How’s the printin’-press gettin’ along, Mr.
Tidd?”

“Eh?” says he. “Printin’-press. What
printin’-press?”

“This one,” says I.

“Um!” says he, rubbing his chin. “Calc’late
I plum’ forgot it. What’s matter with it,
Binney?”

“You was goin’ to find out,” says I.

“So I was.... So I was,” says he.

“And you,” says I to Tecumseh Androcles,
“you quit botherin’ him. He’s busy. See if it
hain’t catchin’.”

Well, sir, you should have seen Tecumseh go
to work. He could work, too, and knew just
what he was doing. He set every one of us doing
something, and it didn’t seem like ten minutes,
though it must have been an hour or so, when
Mark came out with some paper in his
hand.

“Here’s the hand-bill,” says he. “Tecumseh
Androcles, can you s-s-set this up so’s it’ll look
strikin’?”

“Give it to me, young man, and you shall see.
Ah, you shall see.”

So Tecumseh went to work and in no time
had the thing set up. He fixed it so it would go
on the job press and then we began printing it.
Just let me tell you it was a jim-dandy. This is
how it went:

.. container:: center white-space-pre-line

    .. vspace:: 1

    THE WICKSVILLE “TRUMPET”
    IS GOING TO TOOT

    .. vspace:: 1

    New Editor, New Management
    New Policy, New Everything

    .. vspace:: 1

    First Toot Thursday

    .. vspace:: 1

    Mark Tidd and Company will
    give this town a paper that will
    make the State jealous.

    .. vspace:: 1

    $1.25 a Year

    .. vspace:: 1

    If there’s anything you want
    to know, look in the “Trumpet”
    for it. It’ll be there.

    .. vspace:: 1

    Don’t crowd, don’t push. But
    hand in your subscription early.
    If you miss the first toot you’ll
    never forgive yourself.

    .. vspace:: 1

    SUBSCRIBE  SUBSCRIBE  SUBSCRIBE

    .. vspace:: 1

By that time it was noon. Tecumseh was the
first one to notice it.

“It is my custom,” said he, “to eat at this
time. As I understand it you are to supply me
with nourishment.”

“That was the b-bargain,” says Mark. “Come
on.”

He went out with Tecumseh, and the rest of
us followed. We knew he didn’t have any
money to buy a meal with, because he’d spent
his last cent the day before, and we wondered
what he was up to. He went straight to the
Acme Restaurant.

“Where’s the boss?” he says to the girl at
the counter.

“Kitchen,” says she.

“Call him out,” says he.

“Call him yourself,” says she. “Your voice is
as strong as mine.”

So Mark yelled, and in a minute out came Mr.
Schmidt, waddling like an old duck.

“Vat iss?” says he.

“I want to b-board this gentleman here,”
says Mark, pointing to Tecumseh.

“Yass,” says Mr. Schmidt.

“But I hain’t got any m-money.”

“Den you don’t got any board,” says Mr.
Schmidt——

“But I’ve g-got a *business* p-proposition to
make you.”

“Make it quick, cakes iss in dat stove,” says
Mr. Schmidt.

“We own the newspaper,” says Mark. “It’s
going to be the g-greatest newspaper in the
State. Everybody’s goin’ to read it. *You’re*
goin’ to r-r-read it. Now, I want to make money
for you.”

“Why?” says Mr. Schmidt.

“Because,” says Mark, “I like the way your
cakes smell,” and then he went ahead quick,
telling the old fellow how much more money he
would make if he advertised in the *Trumpet* and
told folks about his pies and his meats, and what
he was going to serve for meals. Once or twice
Mr. Schmidt tried to interrupt, but Mark never
gave him a chance. He ended up: “Now, Mr.
Schmidt, you board Tecumseh Androcles and
give him three good meals a day, and we’ll
advertise your place so every f-f-farmer that
comes to town will want to eat here. I’ll write
the ads. m-myself. I wouldn’t do that for
everybody. We’ll give you a full column every
w-w-week.”

“I don’t—” began Mr. Schmidt, but Mark
was at him again, and pretty soon Mr. Schmidt
waved his hands in the air and says: “Stop.
Vill you stop? Eh? Cakes I haff in dat oven.
Dey schpoil. I advertise. Sure. I do
anyt’ing if you go away. T’ree meal a day.
You advertise a column in your paper. Iss dat
it?”

“Yes,” says Mark, and waved Tecumseh to
a seat at a table. “Be sure you eat a c-c-column’s
worth every week,” says he, and grinned at us.

That was our first stroke of business. I guess
it was a good bargain. Once I saw Tecumseh
eating, and I guess we didn’t get much the worst
of it. No, I guess Mark Tidd didn’t get beaten
very bad on that bargain.

We went outside and started for home. At
the corner we nearly bumped into a stranger.
He was a small man, with the blackest eyes you
ever saw, and he scowled at us as if we hadn’t
any right to be alive. One funny thing about
him was that he had on black kid gloves.

“I don’t l-like that man’s looks,” says Mark,
turning to stare after him. “Wouldn’t trust
him with a red-hot stove, ’cause maybe his
hands would be made of asbestos.”

“Did look mean,” says I. “Wonder who he
was?”

“Dunno,” says Mark, “and don’t want to.”

But he was mistaken about that. Before
long Mark Tidd did want to know who he was,
and wanted to know it worse than he had ever
wanted to know anything in his life.

And that’s how we saw the Man With the
Black Gloves for the first time.

CHAPTER III
===========

“The t-trouble with this business,” says
Mark, when we were back in the office,
“is that we haven’t m-much workin’ capital.”

“What’s workin’ capital?” Plunk wanted to
know.

“It’s money you have to keep your b-business
runnin’. Right now we have to buy ink and
p-paper and things. We aren’t t-takin’ in
enough money to do it, and to pay rent, and
such like. All we’ve got is f-fifty dollars, and
that’s got to do. Ma says so. She says dad
can t-throw away so much money, but not
another cent; and if we can’t make this p-paper
pay on what we’ve got, why we can just up
and b-bust.”

“Um!” says I. “I guess we better get a wiggle
on us, then.”

“C-can’t get many subscribers before the
f-first paper comes out, but we’ll print f-f-five
hunderd of ’em, anyhow. Cost money, but we
got to do it.”

“How’ll you get rid of ’em?” Tallow wanted
to know.

“Sell ’em,” says Mark, sharp-like. “We’ll
each take a bundle and sell ’em on the s-s-street
like in the cities. Get more money out of ’em,
too. Subscribers get f-f-fifty-two copies for a
dollar and a quarter. We’ll sell ’em for three
cents—and folks’ll buy ’em, too. Won’t come
down with a year’s subscription right off, but
they’ll dig up t-t-three cents just so’s they can
make fun of what we’re doin’.”

“Got to have some news for the paper,” I
says.

“Yes,” says Mark. “We’ve got a start.
There’s the story about Henry Wigglesworth
being dead, and about that boy. Probably the
will will be r-r-read this week, too. But we’ve
got to go after l-little things for p-p-personal
items.”

“How d’ye know when a thing’s news?” says
Plunk.

“Well,” says Mark, “everything’s news in
Wicksville. But some things is better news
than others, and we can write m-m-more about
’em. Now, s’pose Sam Wilkins hammers his
finger with a h-hammer. Bein’s it’s nobody but
Sam, we’d just write a little piece somethin’ like
this: ‘Sam Wilkins up and banged his thumb with
a hammer, Thursday afternoon. The doctor
says Sam’ll recover.’

“But if Sam’s brother was one of the selectmen,
we’d say: ‘Samuel Wilkins, brother of our
well-known and highly esteemed selectman,
Hiram P. Wilkins, painfully injured himself
Thursday while working on his brother’s hen-coop.
The selectman examined the injured
thumb and gave it as his opinion that Samuel
would be able to go to work again before the
summer was over. Much regret has been expressed
over the h-happening, because it delays
the completion of the selectman’s splendid new
hen-house, which is one any village may be
proud of.’ See. T-that’s the idee. If Sam’s
brother was President of the United States we’d
write a whole column about it, and try to
p-p-print a picture of the hurt t-thumb.”

“I see,” says I.

“Me, too,” says the other fellows.

Just then Mr. Greening, of the Big Corner
Store, came in.

“Howdy, boys!” says he.

“Howdy!” says we.

“In shape to print some hand-bills?”

“You b-bet,” says Mark. “Reg’lar size?”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

“Five hundred. How much?”

Right off, without so much as waiting to wink,
Mark told him.

“All right. Can I have ’em to-morrow
sure?”

“Yes, *sir*. G-gettin’ out jobs on time is our
s-s-specialty. Promptness and quality,” says
Mark, “is the watchword of this office.”

“Fine. Do a good job on these and I’ll have
more for you every week.”

“M-much obleeged,” says Mark.

When Mr. Greening was gone I says to Mark:
“How in the world did you know how much to
charge him? Bet you got it wrong.”

“You d-d-do, eh?” says Mark, with a twinkle
in his little eyes. “Well, if I did, Binney, it
hain’t wrong on the losin’ side for us. No, siree.
I’ve b-been goin’ over the books the last owner
of this p-p-paper left here, to find out how much
he charged for j-j-jobs, and what j-jobs was
likely to come in. Mr. Greening’s was one of
’em. So when he come I just charged him what
the other feller would have charged—and added
t-t-ten per cent, to make sure we wouldn’t l-lose
anything.”

He looked proud and pleased with himself,
like he always does when he does something
that’s pretty good. It *was* pretty good, too.
You’ve got to take off your hat to Mark when
it comes to making money. He’s a regular
schemer, but for all that, he’s fair. Nobody—at
least no other kid in Wicksville—would have
thought of getting at prices the way Mark did.

“The other owner of the p-p-paper didn’t
make money,” says Mark. “That’s why I
added ten per cent. If we f-f-find that isn’t
enough, we’ll add more—and we’ll get it, too,
’cause we’re goin’ to turn out first-class work—and
turn it out just when we p-p-promise to.
Folks don’t mind a few cents extry if they get
quality and promptness.”

Tecumseh Androcles Spat came in from the
composing-room just then, shaking his head from
side to side and looking as doleful as a gander
on a rainy day.

“Mr. Editor,” said he, “my talents are lying
idle. It should not be so. At this moment I
should be dazzling the inhabitants of this
village with typographical displays such as their
eyes have never feasted on. Yet no copy hangs
on the hook.”

“In just one s-s-second there’ll be some
hangin’ there,” said Mark, and he reached out
and stuck the paper Mr. Greening had given
him on the hook where stuff is put that the man
in the composing-room is to set in type.

Tecumseh Androcles stared at it, cocked his
head on one side, wrinkled his nose, and then
began making funny motions in the air with one
hand like he was drawing lines and making dots
and flourishes.

“Good,” says he in a minute. “The thing is
done. Tecumseh Androcles Spat sees the completed
hand-bill in his mind’s eye—and it is
beautiful.”

“M-make it beautiful,” says Mark, “but also
make it quick!”

“Young sir,” says Tecumseh, “no compositor
between the Broad Atlantic and the boundless
Pacific can vie with me in speed. I shall show
you.”

And he dodged out into the composing-room
so quickly his head seemed to snap like the
snapper on the end of a horse-whip.

“I’m afraid,” says Mark, “that Tecumseh’s
bothered with what some folks call artistic
t-t-temperament. I don’t know what it is,
exactly, but it’s hard to m-manage.”

“You’ll manage it, all right,” says Tallow.
“I’ll bet you could drive two artistic temperaments
in a team.”

“I’d hate to try,” says Mark, but you could
see he was tickled. He always likes to be
appreciated—and so do the rest of us, I guess.

“Now,” says he, “Plunk and Tallow, scatter
and hunt up news. Don’t miss anythin’.
F-f-fetch in everything you get to hear, and
we’ll use all we can that’s really n-news. Now
git—and don’t loaf.”

“Huh!” says Plunk. “Guess we hain’t any
more apt to loaf than *you* are.”

“Reporters always try to loaf,” says Mark.
“I read it in a book.”

Then Mark says to me that he shouldn’t be
surprised if it would be a good idea for me to go
to the hotel and find out who was registered
there, and what they came to town for, and how
long they were going to stay.

“And,” says he, “if there’s any of t-t-them
that sounds like he might be int’restin’, get a
talk with him and write up what he says.”

So off I went to the hotel.

“Gimme a look at the register,” says I to
Billy Green, the clerk.

“What d’you want to look at the register for?”
says Bill, winking at a traveling man that was
standing close by.

“To see who’s registered,” says I. “Did you
think I wanted to read a poem out of it?”

Bill laughed and pulled the book away.

“No kids allowed,” says he. “I’ll bet your
hands are dirty and you’d muss it all up.”

“Bill,” says I, “you better quit makin’
fun of me, or I’ll put a piece in the paper
about how you got on the dining-car last
week, and didn’t know what finger-bowls was,
and drank the water out of your’n, thinkin’
it was lemonade ’cause it had lemon peelin’
in it.”

Bill he got pretty red and looked sideways at
the traveling man and tried to laugh it off. But
it was so, and I knew it. He didn’t know how I
knew it, and I wasn’t going to tell him.

“Do I get to see the register?” says I.

“What you got to do with the newspaper?”
he wanted to know.

“Mark Tidd and Plunk and Tallow and me is
runnin’ it,” says I, “and I’m after news.”

“Guess I’ll have to let you see it, then,” says
he, and he pushed it over.

There was five men registered fresh that
morning. Three of them I knew, for they were
traveling men that came to town every week.
One of the others was just a man from Freesoil
that didn’t amount to much, though I wrote a
line mentioning that he was in town. The other
fellow I’d never heard of.

“Who’s this Silas Spragg?” says I.

“Dunno,” says Billy. “He hain’t stated his
business.”

“Guess I’ll interview him, then,” says I.
“Maybe there’s some news in him. Where’s he
hidin’ away?”

“That’s him on the sidewalk, there,” says Bill,
and he pointed to a man about thirty years old
who was leaning against a hitching-post in front
and looking at the town like he didn’t think
much of it.

“Much obliged,” says I, and went out to see
Mr. Spragg.

“Good mornin’,” says I. “Is this Mr. Silas
Spragg?”

“Yes,” says he, sharp-like. “What of it?”

I figured maybe his breakfast hadn’t agreed
with him, or that his shoes was too tight, or
something.

“I just saw your name on the register,” says
I, “and, bein’ as I represent the newspaper, I
figgered I’d better get acquainted with you.
Ever been here before?”

“No,” says he. “If I had ’a’ been I wouldn’t
have come back this time.”

“Goin’ to stay long?” I asked.

He sort of grinned. “Reg’lar newspaper man,
hain’t you?” says he. “Run one of them
amateur newspapers?”

“No,” says I, “professional. Reg’lar paper
printed on a printin’-press, with advertisin’ in
it, issued every Thursday, a dollar and a quarter
a year.”

“Huh!” says he. “What paper’s that?”

“The Wicksville *Trumpet*,” says I.

He laughed. “That’s busted,” says he. “Sheriff
took it for debts. You can’t fool me, sonny.”

“Yes,” says I, “it was sold by the sheriff and
Mark Tidd’s dad bought it for us four fellers to
run. It hain’t busted any more, and, mister,
it hain’t goin’ to be busted, either. Guess you
don’t know Mark Tidd, do you?”

“No,” says he, “but I hope he didn’t spend
much money for his paper.”

“Why?” says I.

“’Cause he’s goin’ to lose it,” says he.

“Maybe,” says I, “he’ll have somethin’ to
say about that.”

“So’ll I,” says he, “and here’s some news for
you. You’ll like to print it, I’ll bet. I’m a
newspaper man myself. Part owner of the
Eagle Center *Clarion*. When we heard the
*Trumpet* was busted we decided to grab on to
this town and get out a special edition of the
*Clarion* for it. See? One plant to print two
papers. I’m here to be editor of the Wicksville
edition.... Now what d’you think about
bustin’, eh? Figger there’s room for two papers
here?”

“No,” says I; “so you’d better take the noon
train back to Eagle Center.”

He laughed, disagreeable-like. “Not me,”
says he. “The *Clarion*\’ll *own* this town in two
months. We’ll give ’em a real paper that
folks’ll buy and depend on. You might as well
shut up shop right off and save expense. Maybe
we’d go so far as to give you a few dollars for the
junk up at your office.”

“Huh!” says I. “If you’re lookin’ for a row,
I guess we can pervide it for you. And we’ll
start right off. Sorry I hain’t got time to talk
to you any more, but I’ve got somethin’ to do.
Yes, Mister Spragg, I’m movin’ on now, and in
ten minutes the Eagle Center *Clarion*\’ll be
startin’ in to wish it hadn’t ever tried to hog the
whole State. Good-by, mister. Better leave
while you’ve got change enough left to pay
your fare.”

He said something to me that sounded like he
was real mad, and I moved off considerable rapid,
because I didn’t know but what he’d take it into
his head to get rough. Yes, I went away from
there prompt, and hurried to the office. Mark
was sitting at his desk, editing.

“Hey, Mark,” says I, “we’re up against it
again. Seems like we’re always runnin’ up
against it. Folks won’t let us have peace.”

“N-n-now what?” says he.

“Eagle Center *Clarion’s* goin’ to print a
special Wicksville edition,” says I. “They’ve
got an editor here, and he says he’s goin’ to put
us out of business.”

“Um!” says Mark, and turned around so his
face was toward the window. “S-s-special edition,
eh?” Then he began tugging at his ear
like he always does when there’s a problem to
figure out or some sort of difficult thing to overcome.
“Well,” says he in a minute, “I don’t
see how we can s-s-stop ’em. But we’ll let ’em
know they’ve got competition, eh, Binney?”

“You bet,” says I.

“Got to m-m-make our first paper a hummer,”
says he, “so folks’ll talk about it and wonder
what the dickens we’ll p-p-print *next* week.”

“Fine,” says I. “How’ll we get about it.”

“Best way,” says he, “is to take a chance of
gettin’ licked.”

“Sounds good,” says I.

“We’ll p-p-print some *real* news,” says he,
“and we’ll have a c-c-couple of typographical
errors that h-happen on purpose.”

“Dunno what they be,” says I, “but they
sound int’restin’.”

“They will be,” says he. “I’ll m-m-make ’em
myself.”

“Kind of discouragin’ to have another paper
crowdin’ in here right at the start,” says I.

“Shucks!” says he. “Just m-m-makes more
work and more f-f-figgerin’. ’Tain’t any fun to
do a thing that’s *easy*. Anybody can do an
easy thing. Where the fun comes in is havin’ to
*f-f-fight* for it.”

“Maybe,” says I, “but that’s where the worry
comes, too.”

“Keep so b-busy you won’t have time to
worry,” says he, “and first l-let’s go find your
Mister Spragg.”

“Come on,” says I, and off we went to the
hotel.

Mr. Spragg was still leaning against the same
hitching-post. If he wasn’t going to do anything
but hold up a post, I thought to myself,
maybe we won’t have such a hard time of it,
after all.

“Mister Spragg,” says I, “let me introduce
the editor of the Wicksville *Trumpet*.”

“Him?” says Mr. Spragg, staring at Mark.

“Him,” says I.

Then Mr. Spragg did something he hadn’t
ought to have done—not if he was wise. He
busted right out laughing in Mark’s face.

“Him the editor!” says Mr. Spragg. “Oh,
my goodness! Thought I was up against some
kind of a man, but nothin’ but an over-fed kid
that’s so fat he can’t hardly waddle. Oh!
Oh!”

I kept my eyes on Mark, but he didn’t turn a
hair. You would have thought he didn’t even
hear what Spragg said, for he just waited for
the man to get through laughing, and then he
said, quiet-like:

“Glad to meet you, Mister S-s-spragg.”

“Go along, fatty,” says Spragg, “and don’t
bother me.”

“I d-d-don’t want to bother you unless I *have*
to,” says Mark, as calm and quiet as a china
nest egg. “I figgered maybe you’d like to
t-t-talk things over a bit.”

“With *you*?” says Spragg, as scornful as anything.
“No time to bother with kids.”

“All right,” says Mark, still polite as peas. “I
j-just wanted to give you the chance, that was
all. I don’t b’lieve in sailin’ into a f-feller till
there’s some reason for it, and if there’s a chance
to be f-friends and keep out hard feelin’, I’m the
one to do all I can.”

“Don’t be scairt of me, sonny. I hain’t goin’
to hurt you any—that is, outside of bustin’ up
that paper you’re playin’ with.”

“Oh,” says Mark, “you’re aimin’ to do that,
eh? I didn’t have any right to complain when
you came in here with your p-p-paper. You had
a right to if you wanted to. And you had a
r-r-right to take away my subscribers and
advertisers if you could get ’em—by fair,
b-b-business-like means. But you didn’t have
a right to come in here d-d-deliberately intendin’
to bust up our business. That hain’t fair or
honest.”

He stopped and looked Mr. Spragg over from
head to toes.

“Come to t-think of it,” says he, “I don’t
b’lieve I like your l-looks. You look like a
bluffer to me, and your eyes are too close
t-together for folks to be warranted in t-trustin’
you far. So I sha’n’t.... That’s about all.
I wanted to be d-d-decent about it, but I
guess that hain’t your way of doin’. So I’ll
issue a little warnin’. Go as far as you kin to
get business. Go after my business as hard as
you can m-m-manage—but do it fair and above-board
and the way d-decent business men do.
As l-long as you stick to the rules there won’t
be any trouble. But the f-first time I catch you
t-t-tryin’ to do anythin’ underhand or shysterin’
you’ll think you sat down unexpected on to a
nest of yaller-jackets. Jest f-f-fix that in your
mind, Mister Spragg.... Good-by.”

For a minute Spragg stood looking at Mark
bug-eyed. He was ’most strangled with astonishment,
I guess. We turned and walked off, and
we’d gone fifty feet before he came to himself
enough to say a word. Then he yelled:

“Hey, come back here! Hey, you! What you
mean talkin’ like that?” And he started after
us. But just then Billy Green, the hotel clerk,
came out.

“What’s matter?” says he, and then he saw
Mark and me. “Hain’t been goin’ up against
Mark Tidd, have you?” says he to Spragg.

“That fat kid was sassin’ me,” says he.

“Thank your stars,” says Billy, “that’s all he
done to you. Take my advice and forgit it.”

Mark didn’t miss a word of it, and I could see
his ears getting pink with pleasure. He wasn’t
swell-headed, and I guess I’ve said so before,
but he did like to hear nice things said about
himself, and more than anything else he liked to
know that folks figured he wasn’t the sort you
could take advantage of. Mark was different
from most fellows. He’d rather have the
sharpest brain in town than to win the most
events in the Olympic Games. And you could
tickle him more by praising something he’d
*thought up* than by praising something he’d just
*done*.

Mark didn’t say anything while we walked a
couple of blocks, but a man with one eye, and
that one under a patch, could have seen he was
studying and studying.

“Well,” says I, “what’s the word?”

“Wisht he hadn’t showed up so s-s-soon,” says
Mark, “I was perty busy before. I wanted
t-t-time to think and study on somethin’ else
for a while. Now I’ll have to think and s-s-study
about how to stop Spragg from gettin’ the best
of us, and how to get the b-best of him. Only
we’ve got to be *fair*.”

“Sure,” says I, “but what else did you want
to figger on?”

“The Wigglesworth business,” says he. “I
wanted to p-p-puzzle out what’s goin’ on,
and I wanted to s-sneak out and see that boy
and t-talk to him. I bet he knows things Lawyer
Jones didn’t get out of him. Boys don’t always
tell men all they know.... Well, I’ll just
have to f-f-find time to do both.”

“We’ll help all we can,” says I. “Maybe we’ll
be *some* good.”

“Now don’t go gettin’ sore,” says Mark. “I
hain’t ever slighted you yet, have I? Eh?
When anythin’ was g-goin’ on you got plenty
to do, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” says I.

“Well,” says he, “more l-likely you’ll get
more ’n you want to do this time.... I do
wisht I could figger out where that boy comes in.
Rock’s his name. What’s he got to do with
Henry Wigglesworth? Why didn’t Mr. Wigglesworth
speak to him at all? Remember Lawyer
Jones said he didn’t. Then what m-m-made Mr.
Wigglesworth come s-sneakin’ in at night to
look at him? That’s the hardest of all. He
could see the b-boy all day. What for did he
want to be p-p-prowlin’ in with a lamp to look
at him at night? It’s all mixed up. But you
can bet there’s s-somethin’ behind it all that’ll
m-make a dandy newspaper story when we get
to the b-b-bottom of it.”

“Maybe we won’t,” says I.

He turned on me quick. “We will,” says he,
“or bust.”

“Huh!” says I. “We can’t always come out
on top.”

“We can always if we t-t-try hard enough.
The reason some folks is always f-f-failin’ is
because they don’t think hard enough and work
hard enough. Laziness makes more f-f-failures
than bad luck.”

“Maybe,” says I, “but this looks like it was
too tough a job for just kids.”

“Wait and see,” says he.

“I’ll help you,” says I.

Lots of fellows would have told me to mind
my own business, or maybe laughed at me and
said I wasn’t smart enough to help, but not
Mark.

“All right,” says he, “two heads is b-better
than a sack of meal. What I m-miss you may
see, and what you don’t catch on to may stick
out plain to me. Let’s get at it.”

CHAPTER IV
==========

The first thing that happened was the
coming of the Man With the Black Gloves.
All of a sudden we looked up and there he was
standing in the door, squinting at us with his
disagreeable eyes. You haven’t any idea how
quiet he’d come. One second he wasn’t there;
the next second there he was, and no fuss about
it at all.

“Howdy!” says Mark.

“Proprietor in?” says the man, chopping off
his words like he hated to use them at all.

“I’m one of t-them,” says Mark. “What can
I do for you?”

“Liner ad. How much?” He didn’t throw
in one extra word for good measure. After he
was gone Mark says he bet he was stingy as
anything. He said he guessed so because he
hated to give away the cheapest thing in the
world—which is talk.

“Cent a word,” says Mark.

The Man With the Black Gloves poked out a
paper to Mark and says, “Head it ‘Personal.’”
Then he passed over a quarter and Mark
counted the words and gave back the change.
The man turned and went out as quiet as he
came, not even nodding good-by.

Mark stood looking after him, and when he
was out of ear-shot he turned to me and said
almost in a whisper, “Binney, l-l-look here!”

Something in his voice made me come quick.
I took the paper out of his hand and read what
was written on it. It said:

Jethro: On deck. Report. Center Line Bridge.
Eight. G. G. G.

“Funny kind of an ad.,” says I.

“F-f-funny kind of a man,” says Mark.
“What d’you make of it?”

“Nothin’,” says I.

“He’s up to somethin’,” says Mark.

“Huh!” says I. “Haven’t we got work enough
and mysteries enough on hand without goin’
out of our way to find another?”

“But,” says Mark, “this is *s-s-suspicious*.”

“What of it?” says I.

“Looks to me,” says he, “like it was our
d-duty as newspaper men to l-l-look into it.
May be for the good of the community.”

“Rats!” says I.

“He hain’t plannin’ no good,” says Mark.

“Likely he hain’t,” says I, “but what business
is it of ours?”

“Everything is a newspaper man’s b-business,”
says Mark, “even things that hain’t none
of his b-business.”

“That sounds crazy,” says I.

“Anyhow,” says he, “I’m goin’ to f-f-find
out what’s the meanin’ of this ad.”

“Go ahead,” says I, “and if you get into
trouble don’t ask *me* to pull you out.”

Mark looked at me and grinned, and I grinned
back, for it *was* funny. Usually the one to get
folks out of trouble wasn’t me. I was better at
getting them into it. But Mark, why, he
made a sort of business of jerking us out of
scrapes we got into!

“Why,” says I, “would a man put in an ad. like
that? Why doesn’t he go tell this Jethro
instead of puttin’ it in the paper?”

“One reason,” says Mark, “is because he
d-d-don’t want to be seen near where this
Jethro is stayin’.”

That did sound reasonable.

“Yes,” says Mark, tugging at his ear.
“Jethro’s expectin’ this feller. This Black
Glove feller’s the boss, it looks to me Jethro’s
either d-doin’ somethin’ or f-f-findin’ out somethin’
for Black Gloves, and this ad. tells him
to report. That’s easy. He’s to do his r-r-reportin’
at the Center Line Bridge, and the
‘eight’ means eight o’clock.... But what
d-day?”

“Why,” says I, “the day the paper comes out!”

“N-no,” says Mark. “I f-figger he means
*next* day. By that time Jethro’d have time to
get his p-p-paper and see the ad. Most likely
he’s been told to look for his orders that way.”

“To be sure,” says I, and it did seem pretty
clear after Mark reasoned it out, but I never
would have got that far in six years of digging.

“So,” says Mark, “you and me will be at
Center Line Bridge Friday n-n-night an hour
ahead of t-t-time, so’s to hide away and overhear
what’s up.”

“And probably git our backs busted,”
says I.

“Hain’t n-never got ’em b-busted yet,”
says he.

“All right, Mark,” I says. “Where you go I
go, but one of these times neither one of us’ll
be comin’ back in one piece. No, sir, we’ll be
gettin’ scattered all over the county so our
folks’ll have to gather us up in a basket.”

“B-b-between now and Friday,” says Mark,
changing the subject, “there’s a n-newspaper to
get out. Stop gabblin’ and go to work.”

Mark turned around to his desk and went to
work. I stood around a minute and then, not
seeing anything special to get at, I asked him
what he wanted me to do.

“Go out and get some advertisin’,” says he,
and went to work again.

Get some advertising, says he! I had about
as much idea how to get advertising as I had
how to catch eels with my bare hands—and I
found out that advertisements were just about
as easy to catch as eels. Yes, and maybe a
little harder. If you try to catch an eel, why,
he just wriggles away, but if you try to catch an
advertisement the man you try to catch it from
is as likely as not to kick you out of his store. I
don’t see why ads. aren’t catching, like measles
or mumps. It would make it a heap easier for
us newspaper men.

Anyhow, all the business I managed to get was
a miserable little advertisement from old man
Crane, who had started to grow whiskers and
wanted to trade a safety razor for a brush and
comb. It was a cent a word and there were
fifteen words. I didn’t see exactly how we were
going to get rich at that rate.

While I was on my way back to the office I
saw what looked like it was going to be a fight,
so I stopped around to watch, but it turned out
to be nothing but a squabble. It was kind of
fun, though, even if nobody did anything but
talk and holler. The men mixed up in it were
Mr. Pawl, who owned the Emporium Grocery,
and Mr. Giddings, who ran the Busy Big
Market.

When I got there they were just beginning to
get started good. Mr. Pawl, who was about
five feet and a half tall, was reaching up in the
air as far as he could reach to shake his fist
under Mr. Giddings’s nose—and Mr. Giddings’s
nose was so high up he couldn’t even come
near it.

“You did,” says he, hollering as loud as he
could yell. “You know you did, you—you
yaller grasshopper. She come right over and
told me. ’Tain’t the first time, neither. But
it’s goin’ to be the last. No man kin say to
Missis Petty that the eggs in my store was laid
by a hen that was sufferin’ from ague. No, sir,
nobody kin. Sufferin’ from ague, says you, so
that the eggs was addled before they was laid,
on account of the hen shakin’ and shiverin’
so.... That’s what you told her, you wab-blin’
old bean-pole. Tryin’ to drive away
my customers, eh? I’ll show you.”

“Now, Banty,” says Mr. Giddings, calling Mr.
Pawl a name that always made him mad enough
to eat a barrel of nails, because he didn’t like
to have folks mention his size, “now, Banty,
jest keep your feet on the ground. ’Tain’t a
mite worse for me to tell Missis Petty what I
told her than it is for you to tell Missis Green
that whenever you grease up your buggy you
git a pound of my butter ’cause it’s better for
the purpose than the best axle grease—but
hain’t good for nothin’ else. Remember that,
don’t you, you half-grown toadstool? ...
Jest let me tell you, this here slanderin’ ’s been
goin’ on long enough, and I’m a-goin’ to fight
back. I’ll give you tit for tat, and don’t you
forgit it.”

“I’ll have the law on you,” Mr. Pawl
hollered.

“Law—shucks! I’ll take you acrost my knee
and spank you,” says Giddings.

“I won’t muss up my hands touchin’ you,”
says Pawl. “’Twouldn’t hurt you nohow, with
your rhinoceros hide. Only way to git you
sufferin’ is to touch your pocket-book. From
now I’m a-goin’ after your business, and goin’
after it hard. I’ll *bust* you, that’s what I’ll do.
I’ll bust you so’s you can’t be put together with
glue.”

“Two kin play that fiddle,” says Mr. Giddings.
“In two months there won’t be but one grocery
store in Wicksville, and that one’ll be Giddings’s
Busy Big Market. Now run along and sleep
on that.”

Giddings walked off, leaving Pawl dancing up
and down and making noises that didn’t have
any sense to them. He was so mad he didn’t
know if he was a man in Wicksville or a rampaging
hyena in the Desert of Sahara.

I poked along to the office with my little
ad. and handed it to Mark, sort of figgerin’
maybe he’d be mad because I hadn’t got more,
but he wasn’t, and I might have known he
wouldn’t be.

“F-f-fine,” says he. “That’s a starter. I
didn’t really f-f-figger you’d get *any*, first time
out. Bet you get to be the best advertisin’-getter
in the office.”

Maybe he didn’t mean it, and maybe he was
saying it just to make me feel good, but anyhow
it was a good idea. If he’d growled and acted
disappointed, most likely it would have taken
the heart out of me, so that next time I’d have
done worse. But as it was I felt, somehow, like
I could go out and get a whole basketful of
ads. now. That was Mark Tidd’s way of doing
things. He knew how to manage fellows and
how to get the most work out of them. I’ll bet
you that some day he’s one of the biggest
business men there is. I don’t mean big just
because he’s such a whopper, but important.

I told him about the row between Pawl and
Giddings, and he laughed till the fat on his
cheeks wabbled like a dish of jelly. Then he
got sober and began tugging his ear.

“Come on, Binney,” says he.

“Where?” says I.

“Out to git some b-b-business,” Says he.

I went following along till he came to Pawl’s
Emporium and was turning in.

“Hey,” says I, “what you goin’ in here for?
He’s too mad to *sell* things, let alone buyin’
advertisin’ space.”

“Maybe,” says Mark. “Let’s try, anyhow.”

So in we went. Mr. Pawl was behind the
counter, walking up and down like a wolf in a
circus cage, and every little while he would up
with his fist and bang it down with all his might.
I guess he imagined he was smashing Giddings.

“Come on away from here,” says I to Mark.
“He may take it into his head to wallop us.”

Mark just grinned.

“Howdy, Mr. Pawl!” says he.

Mr. Pawl just glared at him and banged the
counter again.

“I don’t b-b-blame you for being mad,” says
Mark. “I’d be madder ’n you are if it was me.”

“If what was you?” says Mr. Pawl.

“If a competitor was t-tryin’ to get ahead of
me like yours is tryin’ to get ahead of you.”

“What’s he doin’ now? What’s he doin’
now?” Mr. Pawl yelled at the top of his voice.

“I’ll tell you what I *think* he’s goin’ to d-d-do,”
says Mark. “He’s goin’ to go after your customers
hard. He’s goin’ to offer ’em b-bargains,
and maybe he’ll have somethin’ to say about
*you*.”

“What d’you mean? How’ll he offer bargains?
Where’ll he say anythin’ about me?”

“I *think*,” says Mark, “he’s goin’ to p-p-put a
big advertisement in the p-p-paper. If he does
he’ll tell f-f-folks about some whoppin’ bargains.
And I guess maybe he’ll compare his store with
yours, and his b-bargains with yours, and your
stuff won’t get p-praised much. D’you f-figger
it will?”

“Advertise, will he? Thinks he can git ahead
of me, does he? Go spatterin’ printer’s ink, eh?
Well, he better not. I’ll have the law on him,
so I will. I’ll make him wish his name wasn’t
Giddings ’fore I’m through with him.”

“I know what I’d do if I was you,” says
Mark.

“What ’u’d *you* do?” growled Mr. Pawl.

“I’d b-b-beat him at his own game,” says
Mark. “I wouldn’t let on I f-f-figgered he was
goin’ to advertise, but I’d advertise myself, and
wouldn’t I offer b-bargains! I’ll bet I’d put
things in the paper that would start a reg’lar
p-p-procession into this store. And if I could
think of anythin’ to say, I guess I’d sort of allude
to competitors and their way of d-d-doin’ business,
and such.”

“If I could think of anythin’!” yelled Mr.
Pawl. “You bet I kin think of somethin’. How
big a advertisement d’you figger he’ll print?”

“Prob’ly all of half a p-page,” says Mark.

“I’ll have a page, a whole blinged page. I’ll
show him! That’s the way we do business in
the Emporium. No half-pages for us. We go
the whole hog when we go.... Now git
out of here, you kids. I’m goin’ to be busy.
I’ve got to rig up a whole-page ad. for that
paper, and I got to do it quick to beat that raker-handle
of a Giddings.... When’s the paper
come out?”

“To-morrow,” says Mark. “Better get your
ad. in this afternoon.”

“You bet I will,” says Mr. Pawl, and while
we were going out he was already writing on it.

Mark looked at me and grinned. “F-f-funny
he didn’t kick us out,” says he.

“Mark Tidd,” says I, “I take off my hat.
Talk about grabbin’ a opportunity when it’s
passin’! Well, I guess maybe you didn’t grab
this one.”

“You lugged in the opportunity,” says Mark,
giving me credit like he always does, even though
I didn’t deserve much of it. “But we hain’t
quite through grabbin’ yet,” says he. “We got
to see Mr. Giddings.”

We went catercorner across the street to the
Busy Big Market, and there was Mr. Giddings
in the door, with a grin on his face, looking down
at a crate of eggs. On the crate he had just
stuck a sign, which read:

.. container:: center white-space-pre-line

    .. vspace:: 1

    These Eggs Were Laid by Hardworking, Honest Hens

    The Oldest Is Under Twenty-Four Hours

    Buy Your Eggs Here—Don’t Go Elsewhere
    Our Competitors’ Chickens Have Ague

    Their Eggs Are Scrambled in the Shell

    .. vspace:: 1

Mark started in to laugh and nudged me with
his elbow.

“Laugh, you chump,” says he, “l-l-laugh.”

So I set in to laughing with all my might. Mr.
Giddings looked at us and grinned.

“Perty good, eh?” says he.

“You bet,” says Mark, “but I hear tell Mr.
Pawl’s goin’ to have even that sign beat.”

“He is, is he?” says Mr. Giddings. “How is
he, I’d like to know? He better not start in
on anythin’. What’s the leetle weasel up to
now?”

“Advertisin’,” says Mark. “He’s goin’ to
advertise such b-b-bargains as Wicksville ’ain’t
ever seen before. I got wind of somethin’ else,
too. I hear he’s goin’ to allude to his competitors
in his advertisement, and sort of
lambaste ’em and their goods.”

“He is, eh? When? How?”

“To-morrow, in the Wicksville *Trumpet*,” says
Mark. “He’s g-g-goin’ to have a full-page ad.,
and I’ll bet he’ll say some mean things in it,
too.”

“Think so?” says Mr. Giddings, eager-like.
“Well, now, I’ll fool the little flea. That’s what
I’ll do. I’ll have a page ad., too, and if he can
offer better bargains than I do, or say more
cuttin’ things, then I’ll go out of business.
Paper comes out to-morrow, don’t it?”

“Yes,” says Mark. “Better have your page
in the office this afternoon. It’ll have to be set
up in a hurry.”

“You bet I will,” says Mr. Giddings, “and
I’ll say things in it so hot your compositor’ll
burn his fingers settin’ ’em in type.”

We went hustling back to the office and told
Tecumseh Androcles Spat that he had a night’s
work ahead of him that would come close to
taxing even his ability.

“What is it?” says he.

“Two page ads.,” says Mark.

“Huh!” says Tecumseh Androcles. “I’ll have
them ready. And they will not be mere ads.
They will be works of art. I will bring to the
setting of them all my skill and knowledge, to
say nothing of the genius with which nature has
endowed me. Young sirs, this town will see
two page ads. such as it has never dreamed of.”

“Fine,” says Mark, and we went back into
the office.

“I’ll bet,” says Mark, “that Tecumseh
Androcles was right about one t-t-thing. Wicksville
hain’t ever dreamed of two page advertisements
like those’ll be.”

“I only hope,” says I, “that there won’t be
no bloodshed.”

Mark grinned, happy-like. “Business is
p-p-pickin’ up. Wonder how many page advertisements
Spragg has p-p-picked up for the
Eagle Center *Clarion*?”

CHAPTER V
=========

Next day what Mark Tidd called the
*mended* Wicksville *Trumpet* gave its first
toot. It didn’t break our backs carrying to the
post-office the copies we mailed to regular
subscribers. The four of us boys could ’most
have written out enough papers longhand to
fix *them* up, but we did print five hundred copies
altogether. The rest we were going to sell just
like papers are sold in cities.

We sold them for three cents apiece, and every
fellow had subscription blanks in his pocket so if
anybody got so reckless as to want to subscribe
we could catch him before he cooled off. You
wouldn’t believe it, but before night we had
raked in forty-six regular honest-to-goodness
subscribers.

Folks was that interested! At first they
bought our papers to see the joke, I guess,
but pretty soon they were buying them because
they wanted to read what was in them,
and especial to read about Henry Wigglesworth
and the two page advertisements from Pawl
and Giddings.

The Eagle Center *Clarion* was on deck, too,
giving away sample copies of the new Wicksville
edition. But we had Spragg swamped. For
every local he had we printed three, and three
of the kind Wicksville folks like to read. He
had only a dozen lines about Henry Wigglesworth,
while we had two columns full of interesting
things, and mystery, and Rock, and such
like. It was the first time folks really got any
clear idea of what had happened out there. At
that, I guess they thought they had a clearer
idea than they had. I know we editors would
have given considerable to be better posted.

Ten minutes after he got his paper Mr. Pawl
started out to lick Mr. Giddings. About that
same minute Mr. Giddings started out to do
things to Mr. Pawl, and they met in the square
close to the town pump. Each of them had a
*Trumpet* clutched in his fingers, and was waving
it around like a battle flag. When they saw each
other they both let out a bellow and rushed.

But neither of them was so war-like, when it
came to doing regular fighting, as they were
when nothing but yelling was necessary. When
they got about eight feet apart they both stepped
like somebody was standing up and hauling on
the lines. They stopped so sudden it must have
jarred them, and there they stood, shaking their
fists at each other and waving their *Trumpets*.

Uncle Ike Bond, the ’bus driver, drew up his
horses and craned his neck to listen.

“What’s trouble?” he called down.

“They’re squabblin’ about them advertisements,”
said Jim Walker.

“Um! ... If I was them fellers I’d keep
shet up about them ads. As I view it there was
consid’able truth about both of ’em. Giddings
he lets on Pawl is a skinflint and weighs his hand
with every pound of butter; Pawl he gives it
out that Giddings hain’t got but one honest hair
in his head, and that one’s so loose at the root
it’s clost to fallin’ out. I’ve dealt consid’able
with both,” Uncle Ike went on, waggling his
head, “and as I view it nobody hain’t been
wronged.” He stopped a minute and squinted
down at them.

“Be you honest figgerin’ on a fight?” he asked,
“’cause if you be I’ll stop to watch, but if it
hain’t nothin’ but a fist-shakin’ match I’ll move
along. Hey?”

Both men looked sort of sheepish, and like they
wished they was where they weren’t.

“Go on, Pawl,” said Uncle Ike, “step up and
lam him one.”

Pawl backed off like the place he was standing
was too hot for his feet.

“Um!” says Uncle Ike. “Well, *you* start it,
Giddings. Somebody put a chip on Pawl’s
shoulder. Giddings’ll knock it off.”

“I won’t have no chip on my shoulder,” says
Pawl.

“I see somebody goin’ into my store,” says
Giddings. “I got to hurry over there.”

“Both of you better hurry back,” says Uncle
Ike. “I’m what you might call a man with experience
and wisdom. For more years ’n I like
to think about I’ve been a-drivin’ this ’bus, and
the seat of a ’bus is the place to git experience.
Nothin’ like it. Greatest teacher in the world.
I calc’late there’s few things I hain’t capable of
discussin’ if I was asked. I’m capable of
offerin’ both of you belligerents advice right here
and now, and this is it: You go on back to your
stores and tend to business, which don’t mean
puttin’ sand in the sugar, or sellin’ cold-storage
eggs with a yarn that the hen is still cacklin’
that laid ’em. Jest try bein’ square with your
customers, and with each other, if you kin go
so far, and you won’t git made sich an idiotic
spectacle of as you be now. Nobody’s profited
by this here rumpus but Mark Tidd. Advertisin’!
Huh! Now run along, you fellers, and
advertise all over again, but advertise yourselves,
and advertise honest. Try it once, and see if
you don’t git a substantial profit out of it. Jest
tell the plain truth in Mark’s paper, and stick to
what you advertise. Bein’ as you’re who you
are, ’tain’t reasonable to expect wonders of you,
but you can give a sort of flickerin’ imitation
of business men.... G’dap, bosses. Mooch
along there.” And Uncle Ike rattled off up the
street, contented with himself and almost tickled
to death that he’d got a chance to jaw somebody.

As for us fellows, we went to selling papers as
hard as we could, and would you believe it,
before noon we were cleaned out. Yes, sir, we’d
sold every single solitary one.

“Don’t get s-s-set up,” says Mark. “Tain’t
goin’ to be as easy all the t-t-time. Folks is
buyin’ to-day out of curiosity. Next week we’ll
have harder sleddin’.”

“Bet we don’t,” says Plunk. “Bet it’ll be
easier to run this old paper than it is to slide
down-hill. I don’t see anythin’ hard about it.”

“Huh!” says Mark, and not another word.

Mark and I walked past the hotel, and there
stood Spragg. He scowled at us over the top
of one of our papers that he had paid three real
cents for.

.. _`We went to selling papers as hard as we could, and before noon we were cleaned out`:

.. figure:: images/illus-064.jpg
   :figclass: illustration
   :align: center
   :alt: We went to selling papers as hard as we could, and before noon we were cleaned out

   We went to selling papers as hard as we could, and before noon we were cleaned out

“Well,” says I, “what do you think of it?”

“Kid paper,” says he.

“Those page ads. are k-k-kid ads., ain’t
they?” says Mark.

“Luck,” says Spragg. “I’ll have ’em next
week.”

“Wigglesworth story was a kid story?” says
Mark.

“Nothin’ to it,” says Spragg. “I’ve asked
folks. I’m a newspaper man, and if there was
a story I’d get it. It wouldn’t be you young
ones.”

“You g-go on thinkin’ so,” says Mark. “We
couldn’t ask anythin’ b-better.”

We went on, and when we were out of earshot
Mark says: “That reminds me, I
want to go up to Lawyer Jones. I w-w-want
to know about Mr. Wigglesworth’s w-w-will.
Folks’ll want to know in the next *Trumpet*, t-too.”

“All right,” says I. “I don’t mind sayin’ I’m
a mite curious, myself.”

So up we went.

“Ah,” says Lawyer Jones, “what can I do for
you, my young friends? Are you—ah—representing
the press to-day?”

“Y-yes,” says Mark. “We came to find out
if there was anything new to the Wigglesworth
b-business. Or if you’d tell us about the
w-w-will.”

“Nothing new,” says Lawyer Jones. “I can’t
find out a thing about that boy, and he can’t tell
me anything that will throw the least light on
why he was in Henry Wigglesworth’s house.
Seems he’s been kept alone most of his life—without
folks, anyhow. Pretty well looked after,
I guess, though. Been to one boarding-school
after another ever since he can remember—cheap
ones. Didn’t know who paid his bills.
Lonely little customer. Not a coul in the world
ever stood to him in the position of father or
guardian.”

“Interestin’,” says Mark. “Who’s stayin’
there with the boy?”

“Mr. Wigglesworth’s man-of-all-work. Jethro’s
his name.”

“*What*?” says Mark in a tone that made me
jump.

“Jethro,” repeated Mr. Jones, sort of surprised.
“Why?”

“Oh, nothin’,” says Mark. “Kind of a
f-f-funny name.”

“About the will,” says Mr. Jones, “I
guess there’s nothing to prevent me from
reading it to you. It’s sort of queer, like
everything else that has happened since Mr.
Wigglesworth died. I don’t know just what
to do.”

“Will it d-d-do any harm if we p-print it?”
says Mark.

Mr. Jones hesitated a moment, like lawyers
always do, just for effect, I guess, then he said,
“Wa-al, I dunno’s it would do any harm.”

“And it’ll do a h-h-heap of good,” says Mark,
with a grin. “There’s a lot of curiosity itchin’
f-f-folks that readin’ what that will says will
c-cure.”

“And that sells newspapers,” says Lawyer
Jones. “Well, I’m glad to help you all I can.”
So he went to his safe and came back with the
will. We could understand it, all right, though
for the life of me I can’t see why it wasn’t
written out plain without so many “whereases”
and “theretofores” and “devises,” and such
like.

Anyhow, the gist of it was that Henry Wigglesworth
claimed his mind was as good as new and
that this was his regular will, and no other one
was worth a cent. Then he said his debts had
to be paid, which they would have had to be,
whether he said it or not, I guess. Then he
“gave, devised, and bequeathed,” whatever that
means, all the “rest, residue, and remainder” of
his property to “any heir or heirs in direct line
of descent from myself, if such exist or can be
found.”

All that meant, Lawyer Jones explained, was
that he wanted his property to go to his sons
or daughters, or his grandsons or granddaughters
or great-grandsons or great-granddaughters, if
he had any.

Then the will said if nobody could find any
of these direct heirs the property was to go to
George Gardener Grover, only son of Mr.
Wigglesworth’s only sister. And there you
are.

“Um!” says Mark when Lawyer Jones was
through. “’Tis f-f-funny, hain’t it? These heirs,
now. Why didn’t he up and name ’em by
n-name?”

“I can’t tell you,” said Lawyer Jones.

“He acts,” says I, “like he wasn’t sure whether
he had any or not.”

Mark looked at me with a squint, his little
eyes twinkling like everything. “Binney,” says
he, “that’s a g-good shot. I’ll bet that’s it.
Anyhow, we’ll m-make b’lieve it is till we find out
different. Got to have s-somethin’ to start
on.”

“To start what on?” says I.

“Why,” says he, “the job of f-f-findin’ these
heirs, or of findin out there hain’t any.” Then
he turned to Mr. Jones. “Mr. Wigglesworth
must ’a’ had a son or daughter or s-somethin’,”
says he, “or he wouldn’t be s-suspectin’ he had
grandchildern or great-grandchildern.”

“That sounds reasonable,” said Mr. Jones.

“Ever hear of any?” says Mark.

“In the years Mr. Wigglesworth has been
here,” said Mr. Jones, “he has never mentioned
a relative to me. No, I never heard that he
had a child or a wife. Somehow I had always
supposed he was an old bachelor.”

“Gets queerer every minute,” says Mark.

“Well,” says I, “we can’t sit here figgerin’
about it. We got work to do.”

“Sometimes,” says Mark, “sittin’ and figgerin’
is the most valuable work there is.”

“Maybe sometimes,” says I, “but this hain’t
one of ’em. We’ve got ink and paper to buy
and Tecumseh Androcles Spat to feed, and rent,
and a heap of things. And you said yourself
we didn’t have any workin’ capital. Since we
ran that bazaar I’ve had a heap of respect for
workin’ capital.”

“Me too,” says Mark. “And there’s no
chance of g-g-gettin’ more money from dad.
Ma set her foot down hard. She says we can
waste what was put into this paper, but she won’t
see another cent go after it, and when ma says
it like that there hain’t any use arguin’. We
got to sink or swim all by ourselves.”

“Well,” says I, “I guess we made a profit on
this week’s *Trumpet*, anyhow.”

“Yes,” says Mark, “but there’s other weeks
a-comin’.”

We thanked Lawyer Jones and started to go.

“Come again,” says he. “If you get any
libel suits on your hands I’ll take care of them
for you at cost, so to speak. Glad to see you
any time.”

When we were outside I says to Mark, “Now
don’t go gettin’ all het up about this mystery.
We got enough on our hands now. We can’t
run a paper on nothin’ and find missin’ heirs
and investigate mysterious liner advertisements
put in the paper by men with black gloves, and
a dozen other things. We got to settle down to
this paper job.”

“Sure,” says Mark. “That’s what I’m doin’.
Hain’t gettin’ news about the biggest thing a
newspaper has to do?”

“No,” says I, “gettin’ money is.”

He grinned like he does sometimes when he’s
ready to admit he’s getting the worst of an
argument.

“Maybe you’re r-r-right, Binney,” says he,
“and then again, maybe this heir-huntin’ and
mystery-piercin’ will help to get that money.
Never can tell.”

“I wouldn’t depend on it,” says I.

“I sha’n’t,” says he. “Come on to the office.”

Plunk and Tallow were there, and so was
Tecumseh Androcles. He was standing up,
making a speech to the fellows.

“Ah,” says he, when we came in, “here is the
editor and another of the staff. I, Tecumseh
Androcles Spat, wish to congratulate you on the
first issue of the rejuvenated *Trumpet*. It was
an achievement. On your part, you have filled
the paper with pertinent reading-matter and
with lucrative advertising. On my part, I have
put it in type in such a manner as to cause
favorable comment, even from the metropolitan
press. I am proud to be associated with you.
I hope the relation will long continue and that
the progress of this deserving paper will be
marked and rapid.”

“Good for you,” says Mark, “but one swallow
don’t make a summer. Wait till we see what
happens next week. See how many new subscribers
we can gaffle on to, and how m-m-many
advertisements we can get. Likewise, let’s not
forget the job-printin’ end of it. Now, let’s
buckle down f’r the n-n-next issue.”

Which we did.

CHAPTER VI
==========

Next morning Mark and Tallow and Plunk
and I were in the office just after the train
from the city came in. A strange man came
slamming through the door like he figured out
his errand was pretty important and he was
pretty important himself.

“Where’s the editor?” says he in about the
same voice you might expect somebody to say,
“Who stole my horse?”

“I’m h-him,” says Mark, and I could see his
face sort of setting like it does when he thinks
something unpleasant is going to happen and he’s
got to use his wits.

“Huh!” says the man, looking him over.
“There’s enough of you, hain’t there—except so
far as age is concerned.”

Now, if there’s one thing Mark hates to be
twitted about it’s his size; it riles him to have
anybody make fun of it, and his little eyes began
to get sharp and bright. “Look out, mister,”
says I to myself. Mark didn’t say anything,
though, except, “What can I d-do for you.”

“You can hand over the cash for *that*,” says
the man, throwing a piece of paper down on
the counter.

Mark picked it up and looked at it. You
couldn’t tell by his face what he thought of it,
though he read it pretty careful and then didn’t
say anything for quite a spell.

“Well, my fat friend,” says the man, “what
about it?”

Mark looked him over hard, and then says,
“Mister, if you had as much manners as I’ve
got flesh, you and me would get along
b-b-better.”

“Don’t git fresh,” says the man.

“Look here,” says Mark, “this is my office.
If you c-c-come in here like you ought to, actin’
d-decent, you’ll be treated the same. If you’ve
got any b-business with me, act like a b-business
man. If you can’t act that way—git out.
There’s the d-door. I guess whatever b-business
there is to do can be done with your boss.”

The man sort of eased off a trifle and acted
a little more like he was a regular human being
instead of a bear with a toothache.

“I was sent here to collect that bill,” says he.

“All right,” says Mark. “Now what about
that bill? I don’t know anythin’ about it. So
f-f-far as I know I don’t owe any bill. What
m-makes you think I do?”

“It’s for paper,” says the man. “Paper sold
to the Wicksville *Trumpet* more ’n three months
ago, and it hain’t never been paid for. The
boss he told me either to git the money or to
shut up your shop for you. So which’ll it be?”

“N-neither for a minute,” says Mark. “Here
you come rushin’ in here with a b-b-bill for
eighty-seven dollars that I hain’t ever heard of.
Before anythin’ else happens I want to know a
l-little more about it.”

“There hain’t any more to know. You’ve had
the paper, and we hain’t ever had the money.”

“But we don’t owe it,” says Tallow. “We
just bought this paper a few days ago.”

“Well,” says the man, “you bought its bills
with it, didn’t you?”

“Not if we could h-help it,” says Mark.
“Now, mister, you come with me. We’ll f-f-find
out.”

So all of us went to Lawyer Jones and told
him the facts. He looked sorry and acted sorry,
but he said there wasn’t anything to do but pay
it. “It’s a shame,” say she, “and you’ve been
swindled, but it can’t be helped. The old
proprietor owed this money, and concealed the
fact when you bought the paper. It isn’t
honest, but the people who sold the paper aren’t
to blame. The man who sold you the *Trumpet*
is. According to law you’ll have to pay.”

“Um!” says Mark, tugging at his cheek
like he always does when he’s thinking hard.
“Eighty-seven d-d-dollars. Woosh!”

“We ’ain’t got it,” says I.

“Mister,” says Mark, “you see h-how it is.
’Tain’t *our* fault this bill isn’t paid. Seems to
me like the l-l-least you could do would be to
give us some more time.”

“It don’t rest with me,” says he. “I was
sent here to git the money or to put you out of
business. Them’s orders, and I’m a man that
obeys his orders every time. You can bet on
that.”

“Come b-back to the office,” says Mark.

We all went back there, and us four boys held
a little meeting to see how much cash we had.
Every cent we could scrape up in the world, and
that included advertising bills that hadn’t been
paid, was seventy-six dollars. We’d had to
spend some for supplies and such.

“Will you t-t-take fifty dollars,” says Mark,
“and wait for the rest?”

“I’ll take eighty-seven dollars,” says the
man.

“F-fellers,” says Mark, “we’re eleven d-dollars
shy. Looks like we *got* to pay. Tallow, you
go out and collect in what’s owin’ us. Tell the
f-f-folks why we got to have it. They’ll p-pay.
The rest of us’ll get the eleven dollars. You,
mister, sit down and wait half an hour.”

Out we went, and I says to Mark, “How we
goin’ to git that eleven dollars?”

“I just got a s-scheme,” says he, “while that
man was talkin’. It’s about Home-Comin’
Week. We’ll get out a s-special Home-Comin’
Edition. Get the idee?”

“I don’t,” says I.

“Here it is,” says he. “We’ll print a p-page
full of pictures of our l-leadin’ citizens, with a
little piece about each of ’em. The cuts of the
photographs’ll cost about a dollar apiece, and
we’ll charge ’em two dollars ’n’ a h-half to have
’em put in. That l-leaves a d-dollar ’n’ a half
to cover the cost of paper and p-printin’. Be a
nice profit in it.”

“You won’t git nobody,” says I.

“Binney,” says he, “you hain’t got any idee
how many folks wants to see their picture in the
p-paper. We’ll git a lot.”

“Go ahead,” says I, “but you’ll see.”

“Got the idee so’s you understand it?” says
he to Plunk and me.

We told him we guessed so.

“Can you t-talk it?” says he.

“We can try,” says I.

“Then,” says he, “Tallow’ll take the right
side of Main Street, Binney, you take the left
side, and don’t miss anybody, clerks and all.
I’ll kind of s-s-skirmish around.”

I went along and talked to four people, and
every one of them said they didn’t want anything
to do with it, just like I told Mark, so
I went back to the corner pretty disgusted with
the idea. I met Plunk there, and he was disgusted,
too.

“Knew it wouldn’t work,” says he.

“Where’s Mark?” says I.

“He went that way,” says he, pointing.

“Let’s find him,” says I; so off we went.

Pretty soon we saw him come around the
corner and go into the milkman’s yard.

“What’s he goin’ in there for?” Tallow says.
“Can’t be figgerin’ on gettin’ anythin’ out of
Ol’ Hans Richter.”

“Let’s find out,” says I, and we went along
and followed Mark right back into Richter’s
barn. Richter was standing in the barn door
with a milk-pail over each arm, and Mark was
talking to him. Just as we got there Old Hans
says:

“Mein picture in your baber, eh? Ho! What
for does Ol’ Hans want mit a picture in the
baber?”

“It isn’t what you w-w-want,” says Mark,
“it’s what the f-f-folks in town want. Why,
Mr. Richter, this thing won’t be worth a cent
if you ain’t in it! What kind of a p-page of
prominent citizens of Wicksville would it b-be
if you wasn’t there? No good. Folks ’u’d
say, ‘Where’s Hans Richter? Where’s the man
that’s been f-fetchin’ our milk for twenty year?’
That’s what they’d say. And folks comin’ from
out of t-t-town would want to know what
b-business we had printin’ other men’s pictures
and leavin’ yours out. Why, Mr. Richter, we
*d-dassen’t* leave you out!”

“You t’ink dot?”

“You bet I do. We just *got* to have you.
You don’t think we want to have to print Jim
Withers’s picture, do you? He hain’t been
p-peddlin’ milk here more ’n two years.”

“Jim Withers, iss it? Ho! You print his
picture in your baber if mine I do not give?
Eh?”

“We’d have to, but we don’t *want* to.”

“By yimminy, you don’t haff to. Nein.
Shall der people be cheated? Nein. Dey shall
haff Hans Richter’s picture, and not any other.
Jim Withers! Whoosh! He iss a no-goot milkman.
How much you said dot vass?”

“Two d-dollars ’n’ a half,” says Mark.

Old Hans dug down into his back pocket and
pulled out a leather bag, and I’m going to turn
as black as a crow if he didn’t give Mark the
money.

“Now,” says he, “I giff you dot picture, eh?
Vun I got w’ich was took in mein vedding coat
a year ago. Dot coat iss yet as goot as new, and
fourt-one year old it iss. Ya. Fourt-one year.”

“Fine,” says Mark, and in a minute Old Hans
gave him the picture and Mark turned around
to where we were.

“How you comin’?” says he.

“Poor,” says I.

“How about you?” says Plunk.

“P-perty good,” says Mark. “I got four.”

“*Four*,” says I. “So quick! How’d you do
it, and who be they?”

“Well, there’s Richter, and old man Meigs,
our leadin’ veteran of the Civil War, and Grandad
Jones, that crossed the plains in a p-prairie
schooner, and Uncle Ike Bond.”

“I surrender,” says I. “If you kin git them
old coots you kin git anybody. I’m through.
Nobody’ll listen to me or Plunk. You sail in
and git ’em.”

He grinned the way he does when he’s tickled
with himself and when he knows folks are
appreciating what a brainy kid he is.

“It’s easy,” says he. “Just m-make ’em
feel how important they are. You f-fellows go
and see what news you can p-pick up. I’ll git
in these pictures.”

And I’ll be kicked hard if he didn’t. In an
hour he came to the office with ten photographs
and twenty-two dollars and a half. He handed
over to the collector man what was due him,
for Tallow had got in most of the collections, and
had enough left to pay for the cuts of the photographs.
The man signed a receipt for the
money and went away, looking like he was
disappointed.

“Well,” says Mark, “we s-s-scrambled out of
*that* hole, didn’t we? But we got to do some
harder s-scramblin’ now. I’m goin’ after more
photographs.”

He took most of the day at it, and when night
come around how many do you think he’d
grabbed on to? Forty-one. Yes, sir. And he
had the cash money for every one of them. That
left us with just exactly ninety-one dollars and
a half in the treasury, and so we were really
some better off than we had been before the
collector came around.

“Fiddlesticks!” says Tallow. “Wisht the collector
hadn’t showed up. We’d almost be *rich*.”

“If he hadn’t s-s-showed up,” says Mark,
“we wouldn’t have thought up this s-scheme.
It’s *havin’* to do things that makes folks do their
best. Bein’ necessary is one of the best things
can happen to a f-f-fellow.”

Wasn’t that just like him! And you’ll notice
he didn’t grab all the credit himself, though,
goodness knows, he was entitled to it. No, sir,
he says, “we” thought up the scheme. He was
the real kind of a kid to do anything with,
because he kept you feeling good. All the time
you knew he was the one that was thinking up
things and doing them. All we did was trail
around and help. But just the same, he made
us feel we had as much to do with it as he did.
I expect we worked all the harder because of
that. Do you know, I shouldn’t wonder if that
was a pretty good way for all folks that has other
folks working for them to act. The working
folks would work harder and take more pleasure
in it. I expect Mark had it all figured out that
way.

CHAPTER VII
===========

After supper we met at the office, though
I’m bound to say I wasn’t tickled to death
with the prospect of what was ahead.

“Mark,” says I, “here we’re goin’ out to
Center Line Bridge to meddle with somethin’
that don’t concern us. It ’u’d serve us right if
this Man With the Black Gloves caught us and
gave us the larrupin’ of our lives.”

“’Tis our b-business,” says Mark. “Anythin’
that’s suspicious is the business of a
newspaper man. There’s news in it.... And
b-besides I figger it’s our duty to do.”

When Mark Tidd starts talking about duty
you might as well lay down and roll over. You
couldn’t change his mind with a ton of giant
powder.

“Duty?” says I. “How?”

“Well,” says he, “as citizens. Maybe these
f-fellers are plannin’ somethin’ that ought to be
stopped, and there hain’t anybody to stop it but
us, b-because nobody else suspects ’em.”

“All right,” says I. “I expect I can run as fast
as any of you.”

“Besides,” says Mark, “the man the Man
With the Black Gloves is g-goin’ to meet is
named Jethro.”

“What’s that got to do with it?” I says.

“Heaps,” says Mark, and then shut up like
a clam. That’s the way with him. Sometimes
he gets it into his head to be mysterious and to
keep his notions shut up under his hat. Well,
when he does you might as well forget them, for
he’s as close-mouthed as a bulldog with a
tramp’s pants in his teeth.

“Come on, then,” says I, “let’s get it over.”

It was a half-hour’s walk to the bridge, but
before we got within a quarter of a mile of it
Mark halted us.

“We can’t go bangin’ up t-t-there with a
brass b-band,” says he. “There wouldn’t be
any meetin’. We got to come the Indian.”

“Crawl a quarter of a mile through witch-hazel
and swamp on our bellies, I expect,”
says I.

“There hain’t any law compellin’ you to come,
Binney,” says Mark, “but I f-figgered you
wouldn’t want to miss anythin’.”

“I don’t,” says I, “not even a good lickin’,
which most likely we’ll git. You hain’t got any
idea, Mark,” says I, “how I love a good
lickin’.”

He laughed and says, “Say, Binney, anybody’d
think you was a million years old. Hain’t
there any f-f-fun in you? Here’s a reg’lar game
to p-play that beats any game you can think
up, and we can add to it by p-pretendin’.”
He was the greatest fellow for pretending I ever
saw, and when he was at it he almost had you
believing that what he *made believe* was so.

“Go on,” says I, “start up your game. I’ll
be taggin’ right on behind.”

“All right,” says he. “Us four kids are the
f-f-faithful followers of a young Duke. This
young Duke has disappeared, and we kind of
figger his enemy, the Knight With the Black
Gauntlets, has captured him and is holdin’ him
for r-ransom. See? But we don’t know where.
But our scouts tell us the Knight With the Black
Gauntlets is close to our castle and we set out
to watch him to see if we can’t rescue the Duke—and
here we be. We know our enemy’s ahead
somewheres, and we want to git clost to him to
watch him and overhear what he s-says, if he
says anythin’. Most likely the Duke will make
us all knights if we rescue him, and I’ve always
sort of hankered to be a knight.”

“Me too,” says Plunk. “Them knights sure
had a circus, ridin’ around with lances and
bustin’ up tournaments and lickin’ everybody
they met by slammin’ ’em over the head with an
iron mallet or pokin’ ’em off a horse with a lance.
That there Richard Cur the Lion was the best
one, eh? Say, Mark, what did they call him Cur
the Lion for? Curs and lions hain’t got much
in common.”

“’Tain’t Cur,” says Mark, “though it *does*
s-sound like it. You spell it C-o-e-u-r. The
whole thing means ‘of the Lion Heart.’”

“Fine,” says Plunk. “That’s a bully name.”

“If you want a name,” says I, “I’ll give you
one.”

“What?” says he.

“Plunk of the Wooden Head,” says I, because
I was sort of disgusted.

“And I’ll g-give *you* one,” says Mark. “It’s
Binney of the Complainin’ Tongue.”

I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything
to say, and I might have known better, in
the first place, than to go fooling with a scheme
of Mark’s and making fun of it. So I shut up
and was glad to.

“Now,” says Mark, “I f-figger that Knight’ll
stop clost to the bridge that crosses the river
dividin’ his lands from ourn. Maybe there’ll
be a m-messenger a-waitin’ there for him. It’s
our business to hear what’s said, because a
word may be d-dropped that’ll show us where
he’s imprisoned our master, the Duke.”

“How’ll we manage it?” says Tallow.

“Divide up,” says Mark. “You two men-at-arms,
Tallow and Plunk, sneak over and come
to the b-bridge from the left side of the
road. There’s thick alders growin’ right there
and you can scrooch down in ’em. Binney and
I will t-tackle the job from the right. Then, if
one p-party’s discovered and s-slain, the other
party’s got a chance to come through alive and
rescue the Duke.”

“Huh!” says I. “I know which party I hope
gits slain, if anybody does, and I hain’t one of
it.”

We started off then, Mark and I going to the
right, and Tallow and Plunk cutting off through
the woods to the left.

“We want to get there g-good and early,”
says Mark, “so as to get all p-placed and settled
before the Knight with the Black Gauntlets
comes.”

“All right,” says I. “Maybe I can’t think as
fast as you can, but I can make my legs go
faster.”

So off we went, for a while going as fast as we
could plug, then, when we were getting so near
that a man on the bridge might hear us, Mark
made me stop hurrying and crawl.

“Maybe they got g-guards out,” says he, “and
we can’t take any chances.”

So we crawled the rest of the way, dodging
from one tree to another and getting mud on our
knees and tearing holes in our pants. But it
was fun. I was beginning to get excited myself,
and I believe I really got to worrying about the
young Duke that was held a captive. Yes, sir,
I felt pretty bad about the hole he had got himself
into, and says to Mark I hoped they gave
him enough to eat and treated him decent.

That’s how persuading Mark is. He really
gets you to think things are happening that he’s
only pretending about.

Anyhow, we got to the bridge, or rather so
close to it we could look it over careful and see if
anybody was there. But not a soul was in sight.

“’Tain’t safe,” says Mark, “even if it looks
l-like it was. They may be in ambush along the
road. We got to f-find out.”

We kept on crawling until we were sure nobody
was on our side of the bridge anywheres. Then
Mark made us wade the river, which was only
about up to our knees in spots, to be sure nobody
was hid on the other side. It would have been
fine if there hadn’t been a hole there and if I
hadn’t stepped in it. But I did, and fell down
and floundered around and let out a yell.

“Hey!” Mark whispered. “Shut up! Want
to git a l-lance through your stummick?”

“Don’t expect a feller to drownd without
makin’ a noise, do you?” says I. “I notice you
didn’t fall into any holes.”

“No,” says he, with a grin. “I had you walk
first so if there was one you’d sort of warn me
of it.”

“Which I done,” says I, feeling pretty chilly
and not what you could call comfortable.

“You’ve been wet before,” says he, “and it
didn’t hurt you.”

“Probably,” says I, “it won’t hurt me this
time, but that hain’t no reason I should be happy
about it.”

We didn’t say any more until we’d scouted
out the other side of the bridge and found that
none of the Knight’s men were hidden there.

“Now,” says Mark, “we want to hide ourselves
so’s we can overhear what they s-s-say.
Let’s f-find a good place.”

It was an old wooden bridge, and when you
looked up at it from below you made up your
mind that it had better be fixed some time before
long, for you could see through cracks and splits
and broken boards right up to the sky.

“What’s the matter,” says I, “with hidin’
down under the bridge, right at the end?
Nobody’ll look there, and we can sit on the bank in
the mud and be comfortable. I love to sit in
the mud,” says I.

“Good idee,” says Mark. “Fine idee. We
can hear p-plain, and not one chance in a
hunderd of bein’ seen.”

Under we got and settled there as comfortable
as was possible. I don’t know if you ever sat
in black mud under an old bridge with your
clothes dripping and the evening chilly, but if
you did, and got any fun out of it, why then, you
are better at enjoying yourself than I am. My
teeth got to chattering.

“Keep s-still,” says Mark.

“You’ll have to hold my jaw if you want me
to,” says I. “The cold makes it wiggle and
rattle my teeth.”

“Stuff your cap in your mouth,” says he,
which I did. Oh, it was a pleasant party, what
with chewing on an old cap and all that!

“Wonder if Tallow and Plunk are on deck,”
says I.

“Sure,” says he; “you can always d-d-depend
on *them*.”

“Meanin’,” says I, and feeling sort of peevish,
“that you can’t depend on me.”

“You n-notice,” says he, “that I picked you
to come with me, don’t you?”

That made me feel pretty good, like praise
always does make a fellow, even if he don’t
deserve it, and after that the cold wasn’t so
chilly nor my clothes so clammy on my back.

After about half an hour, which seemed like
a week, we heard a horse coming. It stopped
at the end of the bridge and a man got out. He
whistled, but nobody answered, and the man
started to pacing up and down from one end
of the bridge to the other. Then in another
ten minutes up came another rig, and a man
got out of it.

“I been waitin’ for you,” says the first man.

“Huh!” says the second, and we recognized
him as the Man With the Black Gloves, or the
Knight With the Black Gauntlets, like he was
promoted to be to-night.

“Well?” he says in a minute.

“Everythin’s all right,” said the first man.
“Rock don’t remember nothin’ he hadn’t ought
to, ’cause I’ve questioned him mighty close.
Nobody’s been sneakin’ around to see him,
though a lot of Jakes have drove by to stare at
him since them kids had that piece in the paper.”

“Wigglesworth didn’t leave any writing?”
says the Knight.

.. _`“Huh!” says the second man, and we recognized him as the man with the black gloves`:

.. figure:: images/illus-090.jpg
   :figclass: illustration
   :align: center
   :alt: “Huh!” says the second man, and we recognized him as the man with the black gloves

   “Huh!” says the second man, and we recognized him as the man with the black gloves

“Not what you’d call writin’. Though he
might. Acted toward the last like he was
suspicious of me. Didn’t let on nothin’ to me,
and kept to himself. One night he was writin’
in the library, but what he wrote I dunno. Maybe
it was letters. He didn’t leave anythin’
around. That is, except a puzzle or somethin’
he wrote out for Rock.”

“Puzzle,” says the Knight.

“Yes,” says the first man, “puzzle, or else
he’d gone crazy.”

“What become of it?”

“Rock’s got it.”

“Thought I said to grab every bit of writing
you could get your hands on.”

“This didn’t amount to nothin’,” said the
man.

“You aren’t on the job to think, but to do
what you’re told.”

“Well, I done it,” says the man; “anyhow I
made a copy of it, and give the old man’s writin’
to the kid.”

“Let’s have it,” says the Knight.

He read it, or I guess that’s what he was doing,
because he was still awhile. Then he grunted,
disgusted-like.

“No sense to it,” says he.

“Not a mite,” says the other man.

“But there may be,” says the Knight.

“Shucks!” says the man.

“Wigglesworth was queer—and suspicious.
Look how he acted toward the boy. Maybe he
made a writing. Seems like he must have.
Didn’t *tell* anybody, so far as I can find out.
That’s certain, I guess. But he must have
written. *Must* have. And we’ve got to find
it. Never can tell when a writing will pop up
just when it will send you higher than a kite.”

“I’ve looked till my eyes is wore out.”

“Look some more,” says the Knight.

“Where’s Pekoe?”

“Nobody knows. Gone off to South America
or India or the North Pole again, likely. *He*
won’t bother us.”

“May some day.”

“Don’t believe he knows enough about things.
If he had he’d hung around.”

And right there Tallow Martin let out a
sneeze. I knew it was Tallow, because there
ain’t a man, woman, child, horse, cow, or mule
in Wicksville that could enter a sneezing match
with him and even get second prize. Tallow
would get all the prizes if there was a dozen.

“What’s that?” says the Knight.

“Sneeze,” says the other man.

“Somebody’s around here—listening,” says
the Knight. “It came from that way. Quick!
After them.”

Off they went, tearing into the bushes, and we
could hear Plunk and Tallow get up and flounder
away. Mark was disgusted.

“Tallow,” says he, “ought to train his nose
to be quiet, or sell it to a lighthouse for a foghorn.
Now the fat’s in the f-f-fire.”

“They’ll never catch those kids,” says I.

“Not likely to,” says he, “but they’ll be on
their guard now. They know somebody was
listenin’—and if somebody was l-listenin’ it
means somebody was suspicious of ’em.”

“Looks that way,” says I, “but what do we
suspect ’em of?”

“I don’t know,” says he, “but it’s somethin’
to do with Mr. Wigglesworth and that kid.”

“Sure,” says I, “but let’s not worry about
that right now. Let’s make tracks while they’re
gone.”

“Can’t leave Plunk and Tallow,” says he.
“Maybe they n-n-need help.”

That was Mark all over. He’d stick to you
like a corn-plaster, and he wouldn’t quit sticking
till he’d got you out of any fix you were in. Of
course I couldn’t go off, either, and not know
what had happened, so we climbed out of the
mud and started into the woods after the men.

We didn’t go far, though, before we heard
them coming back, and laid down behind some
bushes till they were past. They didn’t have
any captives, so we knew the kids were safe.

“Well,” says Mark, when it was safe to move
along again, “we know one thing. We know
where our master, the Duke, is imprisoned.”

“Oh,” says I, “do we?”

“Yes,” says he, “he’s shut up in Castle
Wigglesworth, and they won’t l-let him use his
own name, but call him Rock. The next thing
on our program is to t-t-try to get a chance to
talk to him and l-look over the lay of the land.”

We went on back to the printing-office as
quick as we could, and Plunk and Tallow were
there looking pretty scratched up and dilapidated,
and frightened a little, I guess. Mark
didn’t say a word about Tallow’s sneezing,
though Tallow looked pretty guilty. But Mark
knew Tallow didn’t do it on purpose, and he
never lit into a fellow much, anyhow. If you
did something that was wooden-headed he
might look at you so you’d wish the floor would
open up and let you through, but that would be
all. Oh, he was a bully fellow to go into things
with, all right.

“Now,” says he, “we b-better get to bed.
To-morrow Binney and I are goin’ to
Wigglesworth Castle to t-try to see the Duke and to
get a squint at that p-puzzle paper he’s got.
Maybe there’s somethin’ important in it. Bet
there is.”

And we all headed for home.

CHAPTER VIII
============

“What’s in the box?” says I to Mark
Tidd next morning, when we had started
out toward what he was still calling Castle
Wigglesworth.

“Did you f-f-fetch a lunch?” says he.

“No,” says I.

“Didn’t think you would,” says he, “so I
f-fetched enough for two.”

I looked at the box. Honest, it reminded me
more of a piano box than anything else; anyhow,
of a good-sized packing-case.

“Is that full?” says I.

“Couldn’t git in another crumb,” says he.

“How long you plannin’ to stay?”

“Home ’fore supper.”

“And that’s just lunch!” says I.

“Nothin’ but a s-snack,” says he. “Didn’t
put in a thing but six pieces of apple p-p-pie and
eight ham sandriches and a few fried-cakes,
and three-four bananas, and a l-little hunk of
cake, and some f-f-fried chicken, and a h-hunk
of bread in case we didn’t have enough sandriches,
and some b-butter—”

“And a barrel of flour,” says I, “and a crate
of eggs, and a crock of baked beans, and a side
of bacon—”

“Huh!” says he. “I guess there won’t be
much l-left.”

“I wonder,” says I, “if they let our Duke go
prancin’ around outdoors, or do they keep him
shut up in a dongeon?”

“Can’t never tell about this crowd,” says
Mark. “They’re l-liable to do ’most anythin’.
I calc’late, though, he’ll be let out some, with
a strong guard.”

“If the guard’s around, how’ll we git to talk
to him?”

“That’s what we got to f-find out,”
says he.

We got to where we could see Mr. Wigglesworth’s
house—the castle, I should say—along
about nine o’clock. It was a big place with
porches and lots of windows and curlicues and
gables and wings, and such like. I can’t ever
see what one old man ever did with all of it. It
was in the middle of a whopping yard that was
beginning to look run down. The grass hadn’t
been cut as often as it ought to have been, and
things was beginning to grow up in the gravel
walk. In a month more it would look like one
of those houses where nobody lives.

There was a hedge all along the front higher
than my head, but when we had crept up close
I poked my head through and had a good look.
It was a funny kind of a place. Sort of a
menagerie, only the animals weren’t alive.
There were some deer and a big dog and a cat
and a lion—all made out of stone or something.

“Huh!” says I. “If *I* was goin’ to keep pets
I’ll bet they’d be the kind I could teach tricks
to. What good ’s a stone dog, *I’d* like to
know.”

“It’s art,” says Mark.

“Oh,” says I, “it is, eh? I thought art was
daubin’ paint on a piece of cloth, and then
puttin’ a gold frame around it.”

“Anythin’s art,” says Mark, “that hain’t
good for nothin’ but to look at.”

“Then,” says I, “I hain’t art.”

“No,” says Mark, “but you come m-mighty
clost to it.”

“Where d’you s’pose the Duke is?” says I,
changing the subject because I couldn’t see any
use talking about art any more. I wasn’t
interested in art. “I don’t see no guards,” says
I, “and I don’t see the Duke.”

But just then a kid came around the corner
of the house. He was just an ordinary-looking
kid, though it didn’t seem like he was enjoying
himself very much. He sat down alongside the
stone dog and propped his head up in his hands
and stared at the ground.

“L-lonesome,” says Mark, sympathetic-like.

“Let’s go in and play with him,” says I.

“Sure,” says Mark, sarcastic, “and s-spill the
whole mess of beans. What would the Knight
With the Black Gauntlets do if he saw us playin’
with that Duke, eh? He wouldn’t suspect
any thin’, would he?”

“Let’s git him over here, then,” says I.

“Charm him over l-like a snake does a bird,”
says Mark.

But the Duke saved us trouble by getting up
and walking over toward the hedge and then
following the hedge around toward us. When
he was right opposite us Mark whistled low and
cautious. The Duke stopped and looked.

“We’re r-right here behind the hedge,” says
Mark. “Don’t act like you was t-t-talkin’ to
anybody. Come and sit down with your back
ag’in’ that l-little mountain-ash tree.”

The boy did like Mark said, acting sort of
surprised, but not frightened a bit. I guess he
had pretty good nerve, because I figger I’d be
some scared to have a voice I couldn’t see, and
wasn’t expecting, and didn’t know anything
about, go ordering me around.

“Be you Rock?” asked Mark.

“Yes. Who are you?”

“I’m Mark Tidd, and Binney Jenks is with me.
We came out to talk to you.”

“You better not let Jethro see you,” says
Rock. “What do you want of me?”

“First,” says Mark, “we want to git acquainted.
And when we’re acquainted and you
git so you can trust us, then we want to see if
there hain’t s-somethin’ we can do to help
you.”

“I don’t know that I need any help,” says
Rock, stiff-like.

“If you don’t,” says Mark, “you’re the f-first
feller I ever see that didn’t. For instance,
Rock, wouldn’t you l-like to be helped to know
what you’re here at Wigglesworth’s for? Eh?
Don’t suppose that’s been worryin’ you any.
From what you say Jethro don’t want f-folks
talkin’ to you. Wouldn’t you like to know
why? Do you know the Man With the Black
Gloves? And did you know him and Jethro
met on Center Line Bridge l-last night and
t-talked you over? Why d’you s’pose they did
that?”

“Where do you come in?” says Rock.

“Well,” says Mark, “there’s a number of
r-reasons for my comin’ in. First, I’m in the
newspaper b-business, and I want the news.
Second, I kind of like m-monkeyin’ around with
mysteries. It’s got to be a habit with me.”

“Hum!” says Rock, and sat quiet a spell,
sort of thinking it over. Pretty soon he says:
“Well, it can’t do any harm if it doesn’t do any
good. I”—his voice sort of wabbled for a
second and I hoped he wasn’t going to
blubber—“I’ve been mighty lonesome—almost always.”

“That’s p-perty rotten, hain’t it?” says
Mark.

“You’d think so,” says Rock, “if you hadn’t
ever had any folks at all that you knew about,
and had lived with folks that kept you just
because somebody paid your board, and had
been sent off to schools where the fellows thought
you were queer because you didn’t know anything
about yourself and never made friends
with you.”

“I’ll b-bet I would,” says Mark in a way he
has when he’s sorry for anybody. Somehow he
manages to make you feel some better right off.
“And we—there’s f-four of us—would like to be
friends with you if you’ll let us. Honest. And
we’d l-like to help you out. We ain’t just
s-stickin’ our noses into your business out of
curiosity.”

“I wish I could get a look at you,” says Rock,
sort of dubious.

Mark chuckled and nudged me. You could
see he liked Rock saying that, and afterward he
said to me that right there he made up his mind
the strange boy was all right. “He ain’t anybody’s
fool,” says he, “and if you go trustin’ anybody
before you get a good l-look into his eyes,
why, then you’ll run a fine chance of bein’ a fool.”

He says to Rock, “Come out and take a
l-look, then.”

“I dassent,” says Rock. “Jethro’s watchin’
me all the time, and he ordered me not to go
outside the hedge nor to speak to any one.”

“I b’lieve in orders bein’ obeyed when somebody
gives ’em that’s got the right to,” says
Mark, “but this Jethro hain’t no more right to
be b-bossin’ you than I have, which hain’t any
at all.”

“I know that,” says Rock, “but if he catches
me there won’t be any fun in it.”

“We’ll fix it so’s he *won’t* catch you,” says
Mark. “Wait a minute till I think.”

He studied over it a minute, and then says to
Rock: “Hain’t there an arbor back there a
c-couple of hunderd feet?”

“Yes,” says Rock.

“Does it back right against the hedge?” says
Mark.

Rock looked careful and said it did.

“Good,” says Mark. “You sort of l-loaf back
there slow and like you didn’t have anythin’ in
mind. We’ll crawl up along the hedge and
b-burrow through. ’Tain’t likely we’ll be seen
in there.”

“All right,” says Rock, and off he went.
Mark watched to see how he did it, and nodded
like he was satisfied. “Look,” says he to me.
“That kid’s got b-brains.”

Rock did act fine, and not a bit like he had
anything on his mind. He just sort of wandered
around, but every little bit he managed to get
nearer to the arbor. Then he stooped and
picked up a stone out of the driveway in front
of the house and chucked it at the arbor. Like
anybody would, he stopped to see where the
stone hit, and then he walked over there slow
and poked around the arbor like he was sort of
curious to see how it was built.

“Come on,” says Mark, and we snaked
it on our stummicks till we was right back
of the arbor. I poked my head through,
and then wiggled through myself. It wasn’t
so easy for Mark, because a hole that would
do for me wouldn’t be big enough for one
of his legs, but he made it at last, considerable
scratched and het up. Then he whistled
soft.

In a minute Rock came mooching in, but he
didn’t come right in. He stopped in the door
and looked at it. It wasn’t a door, but just a
sort of open arch, and he shook the side to see if
it was strong, and turned around and looked all
over the yard. Then he moved back in as slow
as molasses, until he figgered it was safe to quit
acting and look us over.

“Hello!” says he.

“I’m Mark Tidd,” says Mark, “and this is
Binney Jenks.”

Rock didn’t say anything, but just eyed Mark
steady, and then me; finally he stuck out his
hand and says, “I like your looks.”

“Fine,” says Mark, “then everybody’s satisfied.
I kind of like my looks myself. There’s
enough of ’em.” Mark would joke about his
being fat himself, but if anybody else went to
trying it they wanted to look out. “There’s
this about us,” says Mark, “we may not be able
to do you any good, but it’s s-s-sure we can’t
do you any harm.”

“Whether you do me good or harm,” says
Rock, “I’m goin’ to tie to you. Just,” says he,
“for the sake of bein’ able to say to myself that
I’ve got some friends.”

“Bully for you,” says Mark. “Now l-let’s
get to business. What’s your whole name?”

“Roscoe Beaumont,” says he.

“How old?”

“Sixteen.”

“Where was you b-born?”

“I don’t know?”

“What was your f-f-father’s first name?”

“I don’t know.”

“What was your m-mother’s name before
she was married?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who brought you to Mr. Wigglesworth’s?”

“A man by the name of Pekoe.”

“*What?*” says Mark.

“Pekoe,” says Rock, and then I remembered
that the Man With the Black Gloves had
mentioned this Pekoe on the bridge.

“Who is Pekoe?”

“I don’t know,” says Rock.

“How did he happen to f-fetch you here?”

“He came to the school where I was and said
my father had told him to come after me the
first chance he got and take me to Henry
Wigglesworth in Wicksville, Michigan, but he
says that was several years ago, and this was the
first time he’d been in my part of the United
States since then. He said my father was dead,
and that he died down in South America.”

“Oh,” says Mark. “I guess your mother
must ’a’ died a long time ago”

“When I was a baby,” says Rock.

“And t-t-that’s all you know about yourself?”

“Every single word.”

“Don’t know why you was to be f-f-fetched to
Mr. Wigglesworth?”

“No.”

“What did Mr. Wigglesworth say when you
came?”

“Nothin’. Pekoe he left me outside and
went to the house. He was gone half an hour
and came back and said I was to go in. Pekoe
went on out of the gate and I went in. Jethro
met me and fixed up a room for me. I didn’t
see Mr. Wigglesworth for a couple of days. He
never came out of his room. Guess he was
perty sick then. One night when he thought I
was asleep he came into my room with a light
turned down, and looked at me. I pretended I
was asleep, but I managed to get a look at him
just the same. He didn’t say a word, but just
looked funny—queer. He shook his head and
then nodded as much as to say that something
was so. After that he went out. I never saw
him again.”

“What did you do with the p-p-puzzle he
wrote for you the night before he d-died?”

Rock looked sort of surprised that Mark knew
about it, but didn’t ask any questions. “I got
it in my pocket,” says he. “It don’t mean
anythin’. I guess he must have been out of
his head.”

“Maybe,” says Mark. “Can’t tell. Mind
lettin’ me see it?”

Rock pulled it out and handed it over.

“Huh!” says he. “This d-d-don’t make *much*
sense.”

“I can’t see it makes any,” says Rock.

“If it’s what it *may* be,” says Mark, “it
would take work to f-figger sense out of it. Can
I keep it?”

“Yes,” says Rock. “Do you think it really
is anything?”

“Lemme study it first. Let’s see, it says,
‘Where pussy looks she walks. Thirty and
twenty and ten and forty-six. Stop ninety
degrees in the shade. In. Down. Across.
What color is a brick? Investigate. Believe
what tells the truth.’ Some muddle, hain’t it?”

“Clean out of his head when he wrote it,”
says I.

“Suppose,” says Mark, “you knew you was
d-dyin’, and there was a m-message you wanted
to l-leave, and you knew the only man around
was ag’in’ you, and you dassent trust him, and
you was sick and a leetle queer. Suppose you
just *had* to leave a m-message that nobody could
see sense to, but that had sense in it if it was
studied out. Then what? Eh? Maybe,” says
Mark, waggling his head—“maybe you’d think
up a p-p-puzzle like this.”

“Do you think it’s a—what d’you call ’em-a
cryptogram?”

“I think,” says Mark, “that there’s a chance
of it.”

“What’s a cryptogram?” says I.

“A cipher message,” says Mark.

“Oh,” says I. “Like havin’ each letter in the
alphabet a number or some kind of a mark?”

“Yes,” says Mark, “only this hain’t that
kind—if it is one.”

“What kind is it?”

“It’s one where the words and letters mean
just what they are, but where you have to study
out what they tell you to do.”

“Clear as mud,” says I.

“’Tain’t what you’d call plain as p-p-print,”
says Mark, “but I’ll study over it.” He shoved
it into his inside pocket. “We better be gettin’
along, Rock. We’ll come as often to see you as
we can. You come here every day, and maybe
we’ll be here or leave a m-message. We’ll
l-leave it under that stone. If you have any
word for us, why, you leave a note under the
stone. Eh?”

“All right,” says Rock. “I hope you’ll come
often.”

“We will,” says Mark, “and we’ll keep you
posted. You open your ears and eyes and don’t
miss anythin’.”

“You bet,” says Rock. “Somehow you got
me irit’rested, and sort of lookin’ ahead. I
haven’t ever had anything to look ahead to
before.”

“Maybe you haven’t now,” says Mark, “so
don’t get your heart set on it too much.”

“Good-by,” says Rock. “*Look out*,” he whispered,
sudden. “*I see Jethro comin’*.”

In about two jerks of a lamb’s tail we were
through the hedge and out of sight. Rock
sauntered out of the arbor as if nothing had
happened, and we saw Jethro stop and talk to
him with a scowl. Then we hurried back to
town.

CHAPTER IX
==========

During the next few days we were pretty
busy getting ready for the next issue of the
*Trumpet*, so we didn’t get to see Rock, and Mark
didn’t have a minute to study out that puzzle
about the cat and what color is a brick and all
that. Things didn’t go along as smooth this
time as they did before. Mark said it was
because the novelty had worn off. We got
some advertising, but there weren’t any full
pages, and we didn’t get in half a dozen subscriptions,
so that when the paper was printed
we were just about out of money again.

Our paper, printed with patent insides, as
they call them, had to be paid for at the express
office before we could get it, and Tecumseh
Androcles Spat had had to buy a new pair of
pants on account of some trouble with a dog
while he was out walking one evening, and ink
cost money. You haven’t any idea what a lot
it takes to print a paper.

Well, we got it out all right, and then started
to sell it. But this time Spragg was right on
hand with his Eagle Center *Clarion*, and had
kids selling it just like we sold the *Trumpet*, only
he sold his paper for three cents, while we had to
get five or bust.

And this time he had more Wicksville news,
though we still beat him there. But folks will
buy cheap even if what they’re getting isn’t so
good as what costs a little more. The result of the
whole thing was that we got left with a hundred
papers on our hands, and that was pretty bad.
It was Spragg that did it.

When we knew just how we’d come out we
had a meeting in the office to see what to do
about it.

“If we could only git rid of Spragg,” says
Tallow.

“Yes,” says I, “he’s messin’ up the whole
show.”

“S-sounds easy,” says Mark. “How’d you
goat it?”

We looked at one another but nobody had any
ideas.

“Might sick a dog on him,” says I.

“We might get out an Eagle Center edition of
the *Trumpet*,” says Plunk.

Well, there was an idea and we talked it over,
but it wasn’t long before we saw that wouldn’t
do. We had our hands full now without
monkeying with Eagle Center.

“If,” says I, “we could only fix it so’s folks
here didn’t want anything to do with Eagle
Center—”

“Binney,” says Mark, “*there* is an idee.
Start a t-town row. Get folks here to hatin’
Eagle Center. Make a sort of war, eh? Fine.
Now,” says he with a grin, “all we got to do is
f-figger out how to do it.”

“If that Eagle Center paper would only talk
mean about Wicksville,” says I.

“It won’t,” says Mark; “they’re after Wicksville
b-business.”

He sat back and pulled at his ear like he does
when he’s thinking hard, and whistled a little,
and reached for his jack-knife and whittled
some.

Pretty soon he whacked his leg and says he’s
got it.

“Well?” says I.

“We’ll go to Eagle Center,” says he, “and
interview a b-b-bunch of folks, and sort of get
’em to talk about Wicksville. Bet we can f-fix
it so’s they make fun of this town. Then,”
says he, “there’s that old b-business of the
trolley line from the city, which might go through
here and m-might go through Eagle Center.
What made me think of that was that a s-surveyor
got off’n the train to-day, and I asked
him what he was up to, and he says he was goin’
over the right of way that was laid out a couple
of years ago.”

“Um!” says I. “Sounds promisin’.”

“We’ll t-try it,” says Mark. “Binney, you
and I will go over in the m-mornin’.”

So next morning over we went.

I never saw anything so easy. Mark says
that folks would rather make fun of somebody
or something, whether they’ve got any reason
for doing it or not, than to work and make
money, and I guess he’s right.

As soon as we began talking about Wicksville
they up and sailed into it like they had been
waiting for the chance for years. Of course we
helped things along by bragging a little and by
making a few comparisons that didn’t favor
Eagle Center any. But it didn’t take much
urging. Why, we could have got enough interviews
to fill the paper twice, and any one of
them, when they stood out in print, was enough
to make the whole population of Wicksville take
off its coats and roll up its shirt-sleeves and
start right over to give Eagle Center a walloping.

When we had all we wanted we started back
for home, and planned out how we’d use it, and
the way we planned was the one that would do
the most good, you bet.

“Now,” says Mark, “if we just had some sure
news about that t-trolley line.”

“We hain’t,” says I.

“No,” says he, “but if Plunk and Tallow’ll
git out and tag around after that s-surveyor
we’ll git some. Just hang around him and ask
questions, but don’t l-let on you’re newspaper
men. Just be kids.”

So off they went.

They found out that surveyors were going
over both routes—the one through Wicksville
and the one through Eagle Center. It seems
like the company was keeping pretty quiet about
the whole thing, but from what Plunk and
Tallow could gather, it was pretty sure the
trolley line was going through some place.

Well, there was big news, and if Spragg didn’t
get hold of it it would be bigger than ever.

We set right to work getting things in shape
for the next paper, and called in Tecumseh
Androcles Spat to tell him all about it and get
him to fix up the paper so it would look exciting.
He got the idea right away.

“Will Tecumseh A. Spat dress up this paper?
You may take it, young gentlemen, from an
authority, that he will. It is an opportunity.
This town shall see what a paper with a real
story in it should look like. We will hammer
them in the eyes with type. We will make our
pages leap out to meet them. Ah, this is an
occasion such as delights the heart of a compositor
and make-up man. I revel in it. Trust
me, gentlemen, and you shall not be disappointed.”

And we weren’t. All we had to do was write
the stuff and give it to Tecumseh. Why, he
hardly took time to eat or sleep! He was that
tickled with himself he almost busted out of his
clothes, and we had to keep going hard or he’d
have run right away from us.

It was two days before we got the stories all
written—the trolley line and what Eagle Center
thought of Wicksville. Then we did a little
advertising of our own. Mark wrote the signs.

The first one, printed in big type and tacked
up in front of our office, went like this:

.. container:: center white-space-pre-line

    .. vspace:: 1

    WICKSVILLE INSULTED

    Never were such things said about a town without
    blood being shed.

    Has Wicksville any pride?
    You bet it has pride.

    READ ABOUT IT IN THE NEXT WICKSVILLE “TRUMPET”

    Every word printed was actually uttered.
    What will you do about it?

    .. vspace:: 1

Then we printed about twenty little signs that
said:

.. container:: center white-space-pre-line

    .. vspace:: 1

    Where is Wicksville’s civic pride?
    Will it stand by to be insulted?
    Read the insults in the Wicksville *Trumpet*.

    .. vspace:: 1

That night we put these all up, and the next
morning the town was talking. I’ll bet twenty
folks stopped in the office to ask what it was
about, but mum was the word with us. We
wouldn’t peep.

“It’s so,” says Mark Tidd. “Every
w-w-word of it. This town’s been insulted like
no town was ever insulted before. It’s a shame
and somethin’ ought to be done about it. The
Board of Trade ought to do somethin’.”

“But who insulted us?”

“The whole thing’s in the n-n-next p-paper,”
says Mark, getting sort of excited and stuttering
like everything. “Wait till the paper comes
out.”

“We want to know now,” says the man.

“Well,” says Mark, “I’m sorry, but it hain’t
possible to accommodate you. This is a newspaper.
It’s p-printed to give news. That’s
what we have to sell, and we can’t give it away
any more than the grocer would give you a
p-p-pound of cheese.”

“I’ll pay you for it,” says the man. “Your
paper costs a nickel. Well, there’s your nickel.
Now give me the news.”

“No,” says Mark, “that wouldn’t be f-f-fair.
Other folks have to wait till their paper comes,
and so will you.” And that was the end of it,
though the man kept on asking, and so did other
folks.

By the time Thursday got around the town
was pretty much worked up. You haven’t any
idea how much folks think of their town till
something happens, and then up in the air they
go. Well, Wicksville was up in the air, you can
bet, and it looked like it was up there to stay.
Some folks was for having a public meeting
about it, but others pointed out it was foolish to
have a public meeting till you knew what you
were going to have it about.

Other folks said, though, that as long as you
knew your town had been insulted, what was
the difference *how* it was insulted or who did it?
Something ought to be done. Of course we
didn’t do a thing to stop people from feeling that way,
either.

At last the *Trumpet* went to press, and she was a
dandy. Across the front page was a big head-line:

.. container:: center white-space-pre-line

    .. vspace:: 1

    WICKSVILLE INSULTED BY EAGLE CENTER

    .. vspace:: 1

Then, side by side, we printed interviews,
heading each one appropriately. Mr. Wiggamore,
the justice of the peace at Eagle Center,
said every time a loafer came into his court the
first question he asked him was, did he come
from Wicksville. That was pretty good for a
send-off, letting on that Wicksville folks were
loafers, but he went farther than that. He said
when he had to drive through the country he
would go out of his way five miles before he
would drive through our town, because our
streets were so rotten they weren’t fit to drive
cattle over, let alone a horse and buggy. We
knew that would rile the folks, because we do
take pride in our streets.

Next came Mr. Smart, the grocer. He said he
wouldn’t do business in Wicksville except on a
cash basis. That he’d never seen a man from
Wicksville he’d trust with a red-hot stove. And
he said the town looked like somebody passing
in the night had dropped it by accident and
forgotten it. Also he said that the man that
dropped it was probably mighty glad of it.

Then came Mr. Pilkins, town clerk, and he
gave his opinion that Wicksville was the worst-looking,
most run-down, dilapidated, out-at-heel
village in Michigan. He said it was a shame;
that the rest of the towns in the country ought
to take up a collection to help Wicksville folks
paint their houses. He said it was his experience
that Wicksville folks were ashamed of
where they lived, and didn’t let on unless they
were cornered, and he said that when they
thought they’d be believed they always let on
they came from Eagle Center.

Mr. Stoddy said that Wicksville didn’t have
enterprise enough to keep the hogs out of Main
Street. Now that was a lie if there ever was
one, and it made me kind of mad myself. He
said the best men in our town were the women,
and that so fax’s he could see there wasn’t any
reason for keeping up such a town at all unless
it was that no other town wanted such a lot
of folks to live in it.

Well, those are just samples. The men that
said them were more than nine-tenths joking,
all right, but when you saw what they said
right in cold type it looked pretty bad. Whee!
but it looked bad.

Then, right on top of those insults, and a lot
more, we printed another big head-line:

.. container:: center white-space-pre-line

  SHALL EAGLE CENTER STEAL OUR TROLLEY LINE?

Then we printed the story about the trolley
line, and what was going on. And we more
than hinted that if Eagle Center got a chance it
would do something underhanded to influence
the line to go that way. And we pointed out
the benefits of the line to Wicksville, and what
money it would bring to town, and all that. My!
it was a screamer.

Then, inside, we printed an editorial by Mark
Tidd, which asked our folks if they wanted
anything to do with a town that thought about
us the way Eagle Center did. He asked if we
wanted to trade with them, or visit with them.
He wanted to know why the Board of Trade
didn’t meet and fix up to boycott Eagle Center,
and he ended up by demanding why something
wasn’t done at once to see to it Wicksville got
that trolley line for itself.

You wouldn’t believe it, but we ran out of
papers before they’d had time to dry, and had
to turn to and print some more. Yes, sir, we
printed a whole hundred extra, and sold every
one of them. Wherever you looked was a man
reading the paper, maybe out loud to a crowd.
It was funny. Men stood shaking their fists
and scowling and making speeches and tearing
around like they was crazy. There was some
talk of organizing a party to go over to Eagle
Center to dare them to fight, but this was
overruled.

Anyhow, everybody was mad, and when
Spragg, of the Eagle Center *Clarion*, came out
of the hotel and sent his boys to sell papers, the
crowd took after him and chased him up to his
room, and he didn’t dare come down until the
town marshal went home and put on his star
and then escorted him to the train. Spragg
never waited to see what became of his papers, but
just went away from there as fast as he could.

I don’t believe he was exactly clear why the
folks was so turned against him, but he soon
found out, all right.

Well, there was a mass meeting, and our folks
adopted resolutions paying their respects to
Eagle Center and to everybody that lived in it,
and they vowed they wouldn’t have any dealings
with the town or anybody in it. They appointed
committees and everything.

Mark and the rest of us were at the meeting,
and we got busy getting subscriptions. Civic
pride was the tune we played.

“Here,” says Mark, “is a paper all our own.
It’s a b-b-better paper than Eagle Center’s. Yet
you f-folks let an Eagle Center man come in here
and sell that paper of his, and you r-refuse to buy
ours. Now’s the time to show them. If you
mean what you say, why, cut out that Eagle
Center paper and dig down for a dollar ’n’ a
quarter to subscribe for your own.”

That was the way he talked, and the rest of us
took a leaf out of his book. And it got results,
too. That night we took more than fifty
subscriptions. Which was pretty good. We
thought it had disposed forever of the Eagle
Center *Clarion*, but it hadn’t. Anyhow, it
hadn’t disposed of Mr. Spragg, who seemed to
have got a grudge against us. He wasn’t much
of a newspaper man, but as an enemy he did
pretty well, so we found out before we were
through with him.

CHAPTER X
=========

“We’ve been sort of neglectin’ Rock,”
says I to Mark Tidd, that evening.

“We have been perty b-busy,” says he, “but
we better go out to see him to-morrow.”

“Fine,” says I. “I liked his looks.”

“Man With the Black Gloves is in t-town,”
says Mark.

“When did you see him?” says I.

“He drove in a couple of hours ago.”

“Hum!” says I. “He’s comin’ for somethin’.”

“Yes,” says Mark, and wrinkled his fat face
all up like he was puzzled. “D’you know,”
says he, “that we don’t even know his
n-n-name?”

“That’s right,” says I.

“Nor where he hails from.”

“Correct,” says I.

“Let’s see what we kin find out,” says he.

So we went off to the hotel and asked
questions, but we didn’t find out anything.
Seems like the man never stayed there overnight
and didn’t register. Nobody we could find had
ever spoken to him, and nobody had ever seen
him before a week or so ago. He just *was* and
that’s all we could find out about him.

“T-try the livery stable,” says Mark.

“What for?” says I.

“See if anybody there recognizes his horse,”
says Mark, impatient-like.

Now there was a real idea, and I wished I’d
thought of it myself, but I didn’t. It took
Mark for that. When he missed thinking of a
thing it was a pretty foggy day, I tell you.

Over at the livery we didn’t get much
satisfaction.

“He hain’t never drove in with the same horse
twict,” says the barn-man. “Sometimes it’s a
gray, and sometimes it’s a bay, and last time it
was a black.”

“Didn’t recognize any of ’em?” says Mark.

“Nary,” says the man.

And there we were, no better off than we’d
been before. If those horses had come from
anywheres within ten or fifteen miles of Wicksville
that barn-man would have known them,
so all we learned was that the Man With the
Black Gloves must have come farther than
that.

“If we could only trace those horses,” says
Mark.

“Which way did he come from?” says I.

“Good for you, Binney,” says Mark. “That’ll
help some, if we can f-f-find out.”

We asked around and found out the man drove
in from the west. But there was quite a lot
of country west of us, as Mark pointed out,
reaching right out to the Pacific Ocean, which
was a little matter of a couple of thousand
miles.

“’Tain’t likely he drove from the Pacific,”
says I, “and ’tain’t likely he drove more ’n
twenty-five or thirty mile.”

“No,” says he, “’tain’t.... We might as
well give *that* up for to-night. I expect Jethro
and the Man With the Black Gloves are havin’
a m-m-meetin’ somewheres.”

“How about that puzzle?” says I. “The one
about where the cat looks and what color is a
brick, and all that stuff.”

“I hain’t l-looked at it,” says he. “Let’s see
what we can make of it.”

He took it out of his pocket and we went to
his house and sat down by a lamp.

“‘Where pussy looks she walks,’ it goes,” says
Mark. “‘Thirty and twenty and ten and forty-six.
Stop. Ninety degrees in the shade. In.
Down. Across. What color is a brick? Investigate.
Believe what tells the truth.’ There
she is,” says he. “If you can see any sense to
it, Binney, you’ve got me beat.”

“Let’s take it by chunks,” says I. “That
first sentence, now. ‘Where pussy looks she
walks.’ What’s there to that? Anything?”

“Huh!” says he. “Huh!” And then he went
to tugging at his ear and scowling. “If we knew
what pussy he was talkin’ about we might have
some idee.”

“But we don’t,” says I.

“Binney,” says he, sober as a judge, but with
a twinkle in his little eyes, “I calc’late you’re
right for once, though how you come to manage
it *I* don’t know. We sure don’t know what
cat’s bein’ d-d-discussed.”

“Where she looks she walks,” I says. “Oh,
rats! it’s crazy!”

“If,” says Mark, “it means anythin’ at all,
it’s givin’ a direction. See? If Mr. Wigglesworth
left a message and this is it, why, maybe,
just for instance, he’d hid somethin’. Eh? And
if he hid somethin’, why, he wanted somebody
to f-f-find it, but he wanted that s-somebody to
be the right p-person.”

“Yes,” says I, “but who’s the right
person?”

“Rock,” says he.

“How d’you know?” says I.

“B-because,” says he, “it was Rock he gave
the p-puzzle to.”

“All right so far,” says I. “But let’s git
back to pussy and what’s she’s lookin’ at. Most
likely it’s a bird. Cats is gen’rally lookin’ at
birds.”

“This cat wouldn’t be,” says he. “It would
be l-lookin’ somewhere definite, and it would
keep l-lookin’. What would be the use sayin’ it
at all if the cat wouldn’t still be lookin’ where
Mr. Wigglesworth wanted it to when we found
her?”

“None,” says I, “which makes the whole
thing look crazier ’n ever. A cat don’t set
around eyin’ one spot permanent, even if it’s
a mouse-hole. Cats move around,” says I,
“and hain’t to be depended on.”

“I’ll bet you this cat is,” says he.

“You’ve got some notion about it,” says I.

“Not much of one,” says he, “but I’m guessin’,
for the sake of argument, that Mr. Wigglesworth
wanted somebody to find the cat and
s-start there and go to walkin’ where p-p-pussy
looked. See? That would give the direction
to go. Go where she looked. If she l-looked
south, walk south. If she l-looked north, walk
north.”

“So far so good,” says I. “Go on.”

“The next looks easy. ‘Stop,’ it says. Well,
‘stop’ means to quit w-walkin’, don’t it?”

“Yes,” says I, “but you’re leavin’ out some-thin’.”

“What?” says he.

“Why,” says I, “the ‘Thirty and twenty
and ten and forty-six.’”

“To be sure,” says he. He thought some
more, and so did I.

“Maybe,” says I, “them figures means letters
of the alphabet. A would be 1, and B would be
2, and so on. Let’s try it.”

We did, but nothing came of it. It didn’t
make a word of sense.

“’Tain’t that,” says Mark, “but I’ll tell you
what I b-b-b’lieve it *is*.”

“What?” says I.

“Feet,” says he.

“Whose feet?” says I.

“Feet,” says he, sharp-like. “Measure.
Twelve-inch feet.”

“Oh,” says I.

“Yes,” says he, his cheeks flushing a little
and his eyes getting all shiny with excitement.
“That must be it. It means to start where the
cat is and walk where she looks thirty and
twenty and ten and forty-six feet. How many’s
t-that?”

“Thirty and twenty’s fifty, and ten is sixty
and forty-six is a hunderd and six,” says I.

“Good enough,” says he. “We’re so far in
no time at all. We f-find pussy, makin’ sure
we got the *right* pussy, and we take note of where
she’s l-lookin’ and we walk that way a hunderd
and six f-feet.... Then what do we do?”
says he, with a grin.

“We stop,” says I. “It says it on this paper,
but it didn’t need to. We’re stopped, anyhow,
by what comes next.”

“What does come next?”

“‘Ninety degrees in the shade,’” says I.

“Perty hot,” says he.

“Does it mean we got to look for a spot that’s
as warm as that?”

“Don’t b’lieve it,” says he. “No spot’s
n-ninety degrees in the shade around here
*always*. To be any good for what Mr. Wigglesworth’s
got in mind, a spot would *always* have
to be ninety in the shade. Or else there’d have
to be somethin’ to tell just when to look. See?
If he’s given directions to find somethin’, I
think those directions are good every d-day and
every hour of the day.”

“That’s l-likely,” says I. “If we only knew
he *was* givin’ directions,” says I, “we could git
along better.”

“As for me,” says he, “I’m s-s-sure of it.”

“That settles it, then,” says I, gettin’ a little
sarcastic.

While we were arguing about it there was a
clanging and banging out in the yard like a dozen
kids were knocking tin pans together, and we
heard somebody set up a holler.

“Hey! inside there! Hey! Marcus Aurelius
Fortunatus Tidd, are you at home?”

“It’s Zadok,” says I, and we ran to the
door.

Sure enough, there was old Zadok Biggs, the
tin peddler, who was such a good friend of ours.
Zadok was about half a man high and a man and
a half wide, with the soberest, most serious-looking
face you ever saw. He traveled all over
the State in his red wagon, swapping tinware
with wimmen for old rags.

“Come in, Zadok,” Mark called, and in he
came.

“Ha!” says he. “My friend Marcus Aurelius.
Remarkable boy, remarkable name. Where’s
your ma and pa? Extraordinary folks. No
ordinary ma and pa would have picked out
such a name. Live up to it,” says Zadok Biggs.
“And there’s Binney Jenks, too. Howdy,
Binney?”

“Fine,” says I, “and how’s yourself?”

“Excellent,” says he, “or, to put it in plain
language, very well indeed. What have you
boys been accomplishing? Accomplishing is
an elegant word. I love to use it. Most folks
would say’doing.’”

“We’re runnin’ a newspaper,” says I. “At
least Mark is, and the rest of us are helping.”

“Newspaper. Ha! Splendid! Molding
public opinion. I, Zadok Biggs, might have
been a great editor, though nature fitted me to be
a judge. What newspaper?”

“The Wicksville *Trumpet*” says Mark.

“Splendid! Extraordinary! Are you making
money? Do the folks appreciate a good periodical—paper
is the commoner term?”

“Some d-does and some doesn’t,” says Mark.

“Ha! Not going as well as would be wished.
Talk it over with Zadok. Tell Zadok your
troubles. Maybe there will be a resultant
benefit. Good words, those. Another man
would say that maybe good would come of it,
but Zadok Biggs has seen life and studied life,
and he knows words. Perhaps I will be able to
point out an opportunity. Opportunities are
my specialty.”

“You b-bet they are,” says Mark, and I agreed
with him, for Zadok had helped us out more than
once before.

“Opportunity!” says Zadok. “A fine word
and means a fine thing. What is an opportunity?
Means something like a chance, only
better. An opportunity is something you take
hold of and hang onto and it leads you ahead.
Always ahead. Opportunities never hold you
back. Some folks say there aren’t opportunities,
but they don’t know. If they rode all over the
State on top of my wagon they would know. I
know. I see ’em. Everywhere I see opportunities,
and I see folks missing them. Yes, sir,
missing opportunities that would make something
of them. Why? Because they’re lazy,
or because they want somebody to help them
instead of helping themselves, or because they
haven’t eyes to see. But I don’t take much
stock in that. Anybody has eyes to see. What
they lack is ambition to git up and hustle. Am
I right?”

“You are,” says Mark.

“Marcus Aurelius Fortunatus Tidd does not
let his opportunities slip. I have seen him catch
them by the tail. Oh, many times I have seen
him, and Binney, too, and Plunk and Tallow.
Don’t be impatient. While I talk I think, I
look about to see if there is an opportunity
running at large. An opportunity for boys
running a newspaper. Ha!”

He stopped and scratched his head, and
whistled “Marching Through Georgia,” and got
up and walked out to the dining-room, where he
yelled at Mr. Tidd and Mark’s mother, and
talked to them awhile. Then he came back
and says:

“How does a paper make money? Subscribers,
say I, and advertising. How do you
get subscribers? First by having a good paper
they’ll want to read. I can trust you to do that.
Mark Tidd would have no other kind. Advertising?
There may be advertising your experience
has not made you aware of. That you
don’t know about would be the vulgar way of
expressing it. And Zadok Biggs knows of such
advertising. It pays. There is money in it.”

“Good,” says Mark. “What is it?”

“County advertisin’,” says Zadok. “Things
the law requires the county to have published in
a newspaper. Like accounts and audits and
proceedings and such. Advertise for bids generally,
and the paper that bids lowest gets the
work. For a year, mostly. And now’s the
time.”

“Mostly goes to politicians, don’t it?” says
Mark.

“Yes,” says Zadok, “but there’s an opportunity
for other folks—for Mark Tidd and his
friends. If I was them I’d go to the county-seat,
and I’d see the county authorities and I’d
argue with ’em. Yes, sir, and I’ll bet I’d get that
business. I’d surprise’em. That’s what I’d do.”

“When is the contract g-given out?” says
Mark.

“Next week,” says Zadok.

“Then,” says Mark, “you can expect to see
Binney and me h-headin’ for the county-seat
about the day after to-morrow.”

“Why not to-morrow?” says Zadok. “Opportunities
don’t perch long. You got to get
’em before they flit.”

So we told him we had to see Rock to-morrow
and why and all about it, and he agreed with us.
“Let’s see that cryptogram,” says he. “You
know what cryptogram means, eh?”

“Yes,” says Mark, and handed him the
writing and told him what we had made out of
it. As far as we had gone he agreed with us,
but couldn’t go any farther.

“About that Man With the Black Gloves,”
says he. “I’ll keep an eye out for him. Comes
from the West, does he? I’ll watch. Zadok
goes many places and sees many folks. Perhaps
I will see him. Now,” says he, “is there a piece
of apple pie and a glass of milk and a bed for
me?”

“You bet,” says Mark, so we all had a lunch
that Mrs. Tidd got for us, like she always does
whenever anybody is there, and I went home.
I promised to be there bright and early to go
out to Rock’s with Mark.

CHAPTER XI
==========

Mark was around at my house, whistling for
me, before I was through breakfast, so I
gobbled down my last four pancakes and hustled
out. He had another lunch as big as a trunk, so
it was safe to say we wouldn’t starve before
noon.

About a half a mile from the Wigglesworth
place we saw a buggy coming toward us like the
horse was running away, but it wasn’t. A man
was driving, and the man was Jethro. When he
saw us he pulled up so short he almost snapped
his horse’s head off, which was mighty poor
driving.

“Hey!” says he. “Seen a kid down that way
anywheres?”

“L-lots of ’em,” says Mark.

“Don’t git fresh,” says Jethro.

“I wasn’t,” says Mark. “I was t-t-tellin’ the
truth.”

“Did you see a kid,” says Jethro, “that looked
like he was runnin’ away?”

“How does a kid l-look that’s runnin’ away?”
Mark asked.

Jethro reached for the whip like he had intentions
of taking a lick at us, but he changed his
mind.

“You know all the kids in Wicksville,” says
he. “This was a strange one—one you hain’t
never seen before. See sich a one?”

“No,” says Mark. “What’s he runnin’ away
for?”

“’Cause he’s a ongrateful little skunk,” says
Jethro. “If you see any strange kids sort of
hidin’ around, you tell me and I’ll give you a
dollar.”

“You’re Mr. Wigglesworth’s man, hain’t
you?” says Mark, like he didn’t know.

“Yes,” says Jethro.

“Didn’t know you had a b-boy,” says Mark.

“He wasn’t mine. I was sort of guardian
over him.”

“Oh!” says Mark. “And he’s run off and you
want us to help you f-find him?”

Jethro didn’t say anything for a minute, but
thought it over. Then he says to himself something
about kids being all over creation and
seeing everything that goes on. After that he
says to us:

“You kids make a business of lookin’ for this
runaway, and I’ll pay you five dollars if you
find him.”

“Why don’t you advertise?” says Mark, and
at that Jethro looked sort of startled.

“Look here,” says he, “no advertisin’ goes.
This is a secret between you and me. See? You
hain’t to talk about it to anybody or you don’t
get no five dollars.”

“Mum’s the word,” says Mark.

“You report to me at Wigglesworth’s house,”
says Jethro, “if you find out anything.”

“All right,” says Mark, and off drove Jethro.
When he was gone Mark turned and winked
at me.

“Hired by the enemy,” says he. “Now
there’s a way we can get into the Wigglesworth
grounds and house any t-t-time we want to
without makin’ Jethro suspicious.”

“Sure,” says I, “but what’s this runaway
business? Has Rock run off?”

“It l-looks that way,” says Mark,

“What for?” says I.

“How should I know?” says Mark. “Let’s
head for the arbor and see if he’s left a l-letter.”

We ducked off the road and slid up the hedge.
This time Mark was too interested in what was
really happening to do any pretending about
dukes or knights, so we just sneaked along like
a couple of boys till we got to the arbor, and
wriggled through the hedge. There was a letter
in the hiding-place.

    :sc:`Dear Friend` [the letter said], I’m going away. I
    don’t like it here because Jethro keeps getting meaner
    and meaner, and watches me all the time like I was in
    jail, and won’t let me do anything. I won’t stand it.
    Jethro isn’t anything to me, and neither is that man with
    black gloves that comes and scowls at me and asks a lot
    of questions. I’m going off to China or Florida or the
    South Sea Islands or some place, so most likely I’ll never
    see you again.

    I don’t know what I was brought to this place for.
    If anybody has a right to make me stay, why doesn’t
    he say so? I might as well be in jail. I guess I can earn
    a living, all right. Maybe I’ll go to Alaska and dig gold.
    Maybe I’ll write to you some day.

    Yours truly,

    :sc:`Rock`.

“H’m!” says Mark. “He’s g-goin’ a lot of
places, hain’t he?”

“Wisht I was goin’ with him,” says I. “The
South Sea Islands sounds fine.”

“But it’s quite a walk,” says Mark, “especially
when you think about crossin’ the Pacific
Ocean to get there.”

“He’d stow away on a vessel?” says I.

“Shucks!” says he. “Rock won’t get twenty
m-miles from Wicksville.”

“Bet he does,” says I.

“Shucks!” says Mark again. “We got to
f-find him, and I hain’t goin’ to look in Alaska,
nor Florida, either.”

“You hain’t goin’ to give him up to Jethro,
be you?”

“That,” says he, “is exactly what I’m goin’
to do.”

“Mark Tidd,” says I, “I wouldn’t ’a’ thought
it. For five dollars you’d squeal on this poor
kid that’s in a peck of trouble. Well,” says I,
getting madder and madder, “you can hunt for
him alone. I won’t have anything to do with
it. It’s a dirty trick,” says I.

“Binney,” says Mark, “l-look out or you’ll
bile out of your shirt. Keep it on,” says he.
“How many d-dirty tricks have you seen me
play on folks?”

“None,” says I, “but that don’t stop this from
bein’ one.”

He just grinned as good-natured as could be.

“You’re foolin’,” says I.

“No,” says he, “I mean it.”

“You’ll give up Rock to them men?”

“Yes,” says he, “if I f-f-find him.”

“Then,” says I, “you and me is through. We
been perty good friends, and we’ve done a heap
of things together, and I guess I figgered you was
almost as great a man as Napoleon Bonaparte,
but you hain’t. I hain’t as smart as you,” says
I, “but you can bet I don’t go givin’ away any
kids that’s in trouble. You go look for him,”
says I, “and I’ll go look for him. But I won’t be
tellin’ on him if I find him. I’ll warn him,”
says I.

“Binney,” says Mark, “you’re a n-noble
young man right out of a book. Honest you are.
You’re a hero,” says he.

“I hain’t,” says I.

“L-look here, you saphead,” says he, “have
some sense. I’m goin’ to git Rock back into
Jethro’s hands,” says he, “but not to help
Jethro. We *got* to have him back here. How we
g-g-goin’ to find out about him if he’s run away?
Tell me that. There’s somethin’ mighty
mysterious and important about him. Jethro
and the Man With the Black Gloves hain’t
d-doin’ all they’re up to just for fun, be they?
Not by a jugful. Rock had ought to have
known b-better than to go sneakin’ off, but I
s’pose he got l-lonesome. Poor kid! But lonesome
or not, he’s got to come b-back.”

I felt pretty silly and didn’t think of anything
to say.

“Come on,” says Mark.

“Where?” says I.

“To l-look for Rock,” says he.

“Where’ll we look?”

“Well,” says he, “if you was Rock and was
r-r-runnin’ away, where’d you go?”

“South Sea Islands,” says I.

He just grunted scornful-like. “Which way
would you g-g-go first?”

“Right to the depot,” says I, “and take a
train.”

“How’d you pay for your t-ticket? Rock
didn’t have a cent.”

That was a facer. “Then I’d steal a ride on
a freight,” says I.

“No you wouldn’t,” says he. “You wouldn’t
go toward t-town at all. Jethro was watchin’
you close. You had to sneak away in a s-second
when he wasn’t lookin’. How’d you m-manage
it?”

“Why,” says I, “I’d git near the gate gradual,
and then I’d run like the dickens.”

“You wouldn’t, n-n-neither—especial if you
wanted to leave a l-letter. I’ll tell you what
Rock did. He got hold of p-p-paper and pencil
and pocketed ’em. Then he went out in the
yard and walked around. You see how he did
the other day when we came here first. He
hain’t any n-ninny. Well, he’d walk around the
yard and after a while he’d c-c-come into this
arbor. For t-two reasons. To leave the letter
he was goin’ to write, and to get time to hustle
off to quite a d-distance before Jethro suspected
he was escapin’.”

“How’s that?” says I.

“Why,” says he, “Jethro’d s-see Rock come
in here, and he’d think he knew where he was.
He wouldn’t come p-pokin’ in to see. So Rock
would write his l-letter in a hurry, and scrooch
out through the hedge and run. All the t-time
Jethro’d be thinkin’ he was right in here. Maybe
it would b-be an hour before he’d begin to
wonder what Rock was up to so l-long and
come in to see. In an hour Rock could move
off quite a ways.”

“Sure,” says I, “but where’d he move to?”

“He’d git away from the road,” says Mark.
“He wouldn’t take the road t-toward Wicksville,
and he wouldn’t go the other way, and he
wouldn’t cross the road and go s-south, because
somebody might see him when he crossed.
There hain’t but one other way for him to
go, and that’s n-north toward the r-river and
the woods. That’s where he went.”

“Sounds likely,” I says.

“It’s sure,” says he. “He got through the
hedge and took a l-look and seen those woods
right there. Then he made for ’em lickety-split.”

“When did he go?” says I. “The letter
didn’t say.”

“This m-mornin’,” says Mark. “Jethro was
all excited. Didn’t he act that way? Like he’d
just found out Rock was gone? Sure he did.
He acted like he was most r-rattled to pieces,
and the first thing he did was to hitch a horse
and go f-flyin’ off wild-like, just lookin’ for the
sake of lookin’. Anyhow, Jethro hain’t got
many brains. Yes, Binney, you can bet Jethro
just f-found it out.”

“Then,” says I, “Rock hain’t been gone
more ’n an hour or two.”

“That’s how I f-f-figger,” says he.

“Come on, then,” says I, “he’s got quite a start.”

We streaked it along till we got out of the
field and into the woods. Maybe you think
because Mark Tidd is fat that he can’t move.
Well you’d get fooled there, for though there’s
enough of him for two boys and their little
brother rolled into one, he can get from one
place to another about as fast as the next one.
I’ve read those rhinoceroses and hippopotamuses
in Africa are pretty whopping animals, but that
when they get started they can run to beat a
horse. I don’t know if it’s so, but Mark Tidd
sort of leads me to believe it.

Right in the edge of the woods Mark stopped
and picked up a cap.

“There,” says he.

“Rock’s?” says I.

“He was wearin’ it when I saw it l-last,” says he.

“Must ’a’ been in a hurry, not to pick it up.”

“P-panic,” says Mark. “He got to runnin’
across the f-field and then got scairt. It works
that way. Once you start to run, the idee gits
into your head s-somebody’s chasin’ you hard.
I’ll bet Rock thought Jethro was right onto his
heels. He didn’t stop for anythin’.”

“Hope he hain’t runnin’ yet,” says I.

“Can’t tell,” says Mark, “but I was right
about the way he went, eh?”

You see, when he did a thing that was pretty
bright he liked to have folks tell him so. Not
that he was what you’d call vain. He wasn’t,
and he wasn’t all excited about himself, either,
but he was funny that way, and I guess we
liked him all the better on account of it. So I
told him he was right about it, and that it was
a good job of figgering things out. And I was
telling him what was so, too, for it *was* a good
job. I wouldn’t have thought out what Rock
had done in forty years.

We cut straight through the woods to the
river, but when we came to it we stopped, for
we didn’t know whether Rock went up-stream
or down, or waded across.

“He didn’t wade,” says Mark, “b-because he
don’t know this river. It l-looks like it might
be deep out there, and the current’s swift. He
wouldn’t tackle it.”

“I guess not,” says I, “but which way did
he go?”

“That,” says Mark, “is what we got to f-find
out. Maybe he didn’t come right down to the
river at all, but I think he did.”

“Why?” says I.

“To see if he couldn’t get across. He’d f-feel
safer with a river between him and Jethro. But
he didn’t cross here. It looks dangerous. Either
he went up or down, and I think close to the
water, searchin’ for a place to cross.”

“It’s perty soft along here for quite a ways,”
says I. “Maybe we can find footprints.”

“You go up,” says Mark, “and I’ll go down.
Holler if you f-f-find any thin’.”

I went off like he said, pretending I was an
Indian. Maybe a couple of hunderd feet upstream
I came on a place where somebody had
walked right down to the edge of the river,
because there in the mud were tracks filled with
water. The place was tramped up quite a bit,
and there were tracks leading back away from
the river toward the bluff and the trees.

I yelled at Mark and he turned and came.

We followed the tracks part way up the bluff
and then they turned up-stream, going along
among the trees. Then, all of a sudden, they
went up the bank again and turned right back
down-stream the way they’d come from, and
then they went higher till they came to a rail
fence right along the edge of the bluff and among
the trees. From that minute we couldn’t find
another track.

“Huh!” says Mark, after a couple of minutes.
“Rock’s all right. Know what he did?”

“No,” says I. “What?”

“Got on top of the fence and went along.
Maybe took off his shoes, because the t-top rail
hain’t scratched up anywheres. Figgered he
wouldn’t leave any trail. What with his doublin’
back and f-f-forth, we don’t know which way
he’s aimin’. Maybe he went up and maybe he
went down. He’s a good one, all right.”

“Too good for us,” says I, sort of discouraged.

“Huh!” says Mark, like he didn’t like my
saying that very well.

“What’ll we do?” says I.

“Eat,” says he, “and then hunt both ways.
Separate like we did below.”

“All right,” says I, and that’s what we did.
But not a sign had either of us seen of him when
we met at the office just before supper-time.
Rock had just naturally up and disappeared.

CHAPTER XII
===========

We had to forget about Rock for the next
day, anyhow, and go to the county-seat
to see about that political printing. It was two
hours’ ride on the train, but we enjoyed that
and made use of it planning how we’d go to
work to land the business. At least Mark
planned and I listened while he did it. But,
somehow or other, the plans we made weren’t
the ones we carried out. Not by a long shot.
If they had been Mark wouldn’t have been as
famous in the State as he is to-day among men
that follow up politics for a living, and among
newspaper men.

No, the plans we carried out were other plans
altogether, and they were made in a lot less than
two hours. I should say they were.

We got off the train and went up to the court-house.
At the door stood a lot of men smoking
and loafing and talking, and we walked up to
them and wanted to know where we’d find the
man that gave out the county printing to the
newspapers.

A couple of them winked at each other and
said we’d better see the judge of probate, who
took care of orphans and lunatics and such, and
I expected to hear Mark come right back at him
with something hot. But he didn’t. Afterward
he said to me:

“Binney, when you’re on b-business don’t let
anythin’ mix up with it. If you git grudges ag’in’
folks s-s-save ’em up for some other day. Some
feller may say somethin’ smart to you and git
a l-lot of fun out of it. If you take him d-down
off ’n his high horse it’ll sour him quick—and that
very man may be the f-feller whose scalp you’re
after.”

“Shucks!” says I.

“It’s easier to git what you want out of a man
that’s f-f-feelin’ good,” says he, “and there hain’t
no way to make a man feel g-good that beats
lettin’ him think he’s awful smart. If you let
him make a j-joke on you, why, he sort of feels
friendly ’cause you’ve helped him show his
friends what a w-w-whale of a feller he is. And
then you git easier s-sailin’.”

“Maybe so,” says I; “that’s figgerin’ too far
ahead for me. If somebody says somethin’
fresh to me and I kin think of somethin’ to
say back, why, you can bet your hat I’m goin’
to pop it right at him.”

“And l-lose money by it,” says he.

“Money hain’t the whole thing,” says I.

“It is,” says he, “when it’s money you’re
*after*. When you start out f-for a thing you
want to git it, don’t you, whether it’s m-money
or apples or f-freckles on your nose? It hain’t
the money that’s important; it’s *gittin’* it.”

That was Mark Tidd all over. If he made
up his mind he was after a thing he stuck to it
till he got it, or till it was put where it was a sure
thing he couldn’t touch it. It wasn’t so much
that he wanted the *thing*, whatever it was; it
was that he was bound to do what he set out
to do. He might figure and work a week to get
some old thing, and then turn right around and
give it to you. It was just the being able to
*get* it that interested *him*.

So he didn’t say a word back to the man that
joked him—that is, not a word that was smart.
He just says, “We hain’t got any orphans or
l-lunatics on hand this m-mornin’, but we’d
like mighty well to see that printin’ feller.”

He was so all-fired polite about it that somebody
spoke up and says, “There’s a couple of
’em you’ll have to deal with, sonny. Feller
named Brown and another feller named Wiggins,
and they hain’t what you could call friends,
neither. You hain’t like to find ’em roostin’ in
the same bush. Both of them’s inside somewheres.
If you find a feller skinnier ’n a beanpole
and along about nine feet high, with red
hair on top of him, why, that’s Wiggins. If
you run ag’in’ a feller equal skinny and equal tall
without no hair at all, why, that’s Brown. You
can’t mistake either of ’em.”

“Much obliged,” says Mark, and in we
went.

We poked around quite a spell, going one
place and another, but we didn’t see any tall,
thin men, till we got onto the second floor and
walked up to some doors that were standing
open, and looked in. It was a court-room. We
knew that right off because there was a high
place built up for the judge in front, and a pen
for the jury and lots of seats. Nothing was
going on at all, and we were coming out again
when we heard a sort of murmur like folks were
talking low and confidential.

“’S-s-sh!” says Mark, who was always cautious
till he found out where he stood. Then he
craned his neck, and ’way back in the shadows
were two men, one standing and the other
sitting, and the standing man was so tall and
thin he could have got a job in a circus. The
sitting man was thin, with a bunch of carroty
hair.

“Brown and Wiggins,” says Mark, drawing
back quick.

“Come on in, then,” says I.

“Nix,” says he. “L-let’s think.... Man
said they wasn’t friends, didn’t he, and that we
wasn’t likely to f-f-find ’em together?”

“Yes,” says I.

“Then,” says he, “if folks that know ’em
f-figger they wouldn’t be together, it’s sort of
f-f-funny to find ’em hobnobbin’, hain’t it?”

“Why,” says I, “I calc’late it is.”

“And them b-bein’ politicians, it’s f-funnier ’n
ever,” says he.

“To be sure,” says I.

“Politicians,” says he, “is said to be
s-s-slippery.”

“My dad says so.”

“Then,” says he, “l-lookin’ at this from all
sides, a man up a t-tree would figger them fellers
was up to somethin’, eh?”

“Shouldn’t wonder,” says I, “but what of
it?”

“And they’ve s-sneaked off and hid to talk,”
says he to himself.

“None of our business,” says I.

“Newspaper men, hain’t we?”

“Yes,” says I.

“Sellin’ advertisin’ to the county to-day?”

“Yes,” says I.

“Then,” says he, “whatever those f-fellers do
is mighty int’restin’ to me.”

“All right,” says I. “What of it?”

“I’m f-figgerin’,” says he, “on how we could
git to l-listen a little to what they was sayin’.”

“Eavesdroppin’,” says I, scornful-like.

“When men is up to a game and s-sneaks off
to p-plan it,” he says, “it’s not eavesdroppin’ to
listen. They git what’s comin’ to ’em.”

“Have it that way, then,” says I.

“But,” says he, “g-gittin’ so’s we can listen
hain’t so easy. Let’s go outside and look
around.”

We went, and as we walked down-stairs Mark
says, “The p’litical fight in this county this fall
is over the sheriff.”

“I know it,” says I.

“Then,” says he, “if two men that’s p’litical
enemies is seen hobnobbin’, most likely the
sheriff’s got somethin’ to do with it. Bowman’s
the man that’s got the job now, and Whittaker
wants to git the Republican nomination away
from him. Now, takin’ for granted that pow-wow
up there’s about the sheriff, why, what
be they d-doin’ about it?”

“How should I know?” says I.

We stopped a minute at the door, and Mark
says, “How’s the fight for sheriff gettin’ on?”

“Perty hot,” says a man—“perty almighty
hot.”

“Brown’s for Bowman, hain’t he?” says Mark.

“No,” says the man; “where’d you git that
idee? He’s strong for Whittaker.”

“How’s Wiggins?”

“Nobody knows, but fellers that pertends to
be wise figgers he’s for Bowman—jest so’s to be
for anybody Brown is against.”

“Huh!” says Mark. “What d’you calc’late
’u’d happen if Brown and Wiggins was to make
up f-friends and work for the same man?”

“It couldn’t happen,” says the man, “but
if it did, with the batch of delegates each one of
’em controls in the convention, the man they
agreed on would have a walk-away.”

“Hum!” says Mark. “Is Brown awful strong
for Whittaker?”

“Whittaker’s best friend he’s got. Why,
Whittaker lent him the money to go into business
first, and has always been befriendin’ him, and
two year ago Brown up and married Whittaker’s
sister.”

“So,” says Mark, “there hain’t much danger
of his switchin’ to Bowman?”

“He jest *couldn’t*,” says the man.

“Hum!” says Mark. “Int’restin’ to hear.
Much obliged, mister.”

We walked on, and all of a sudden Mark
chuckled right out. “Binney,” says he, “we
don’t need to go listenin’ to what those f-f-fellers
is talkin’ about. I know.”

“Shucks!” says I.

“Wait and see,” says he. “We’ll walk
around a while and then go back and see
Wiggins.”

Which we did. In half an hour we went back,
and after looking around a spell we found
Wiggins in his office. In we went.

“Howdy-do, Mr. Wiggins!” says Mark, “I’m
Mark Tidd, of Wicksville, and this is Binney
Jenks.”

“Glad to meet you,” says Mr. Wiggins.
“What can I do for you?”

“Why,” says Mark, “we come on b-business.
I’m editor of the Wicksville *Trumpet*” he says,
“and the Wicksville *Trumpet* needs some good
steady advertisin’. So,” says he, “we come to
see if we couldn’t git the c-county p-printin’ for
the next year.”

“H’m!” says Mr. Wiggins, his eyes twinkling
like he wanted to laugh. “Juvenile paper?
Amateur editor?”

“Not any,” says Mark. “Reg’lar weekly,”
and he showed Mr. Wiggins a copy.

“Mean to say you boys are running this?”
he asked.

“Yes, sir,” says Mark.

“Well,” says Mr. Wiggins, “the way this
printing is given out, the papers that want it
make bids telling how much the county will
have to pay, and then the bids are opened and
the job goes to the lowest.”

“Sure,” says Mark, “that’s the gen’ral idee
of it, but,” he says, “most gen’ally the f-feller
gits it that’s got the most p’litical pull, don’t he,
honest Injun?”

Mr. Wiggins laughed. “Well,” he said,
“maybe politics does have something to do with
it. If you think that, what made you come?”

“Because,” says Mark, “Binney and me is
p-politicians, and we got pull.”

“Oh,” says Mr. Wiggins. “What influence
have you to bring to bear?”

“Why,” says Mark, “we sort of f-f-figger on
*yours*, and on Mr. Brown’s.”

Mr. Wiggins laughed right out. “Don’t you
know,” says he, “that Brown and I don’t live
in the same nest at all? You couldn’t get the
two of us to agree on anything to save your life.
And, besides, I never saw you or heard of you
before. How do you figure you have *my*
influence?”

“Because,” says Mark, “we calc’late to be
reg’lar p-politicians and see farther into what’s
goin’ on than m-most folks, and because you
want us on your side a l-little worse ’n you want
’most anybody else in the county.”

“Now look here, sonny,” says Mr. Wiggins,
“I’m pretty busy, and, while I like boys and am
willing to fool with ’em, to-day I’m short of
time. Come in some other day.”

“Wait a m-minute,” says Mark, “till we tell
you how we size up this here sheriff fight.” He
didn’t wait for Wiggins to say he could, but
jumped right into it.

“This here is the hardest f-f-fight for sheriff
in years,” says he, “and anybody that b-beats
out Bowman’s got a job on his hands, eh?”

“Yes,” says Wiggins.

“And f-f oiks gen’ally think you’re for Bowman,
don’t they?”.

“Yes.”

“And so his side’s restin’ easier in their
minds?”

“Some,” says Wiggins.

“Well, then,” says Mark, “s’posin’ I was to
p-print a story in my paper sayin’ that the row
between you and Brown was made up, and that
you and Brown had met and hobnobbed and
that you’d agreed, for some reason or another,
to wait till the convention and, when the f-fight
got good and hot, to make the d-delegates you
control vote, not for Bowman, but for Whittaker?
Folks ’u’d be int’rested in that story, eh?”

“Say, kid,” says Wiggins, jumping up onto
his feet, “who sent you here?”

“Nobody,” says Mark. “We just come after
the p-printin’.”

“What you say is bosh,” says Wiggins.

“It’s *so*,” says Mark, “and we know it’s so,
and you know it’s so. What,” says he, “if you
was overheard t-talkin’ up in the court-room
awhile ago?”

Mr. Wiggins sort of caved in. “You haven’t
told anybody?”

“Course not. Sich p’litical information
hain’t much good when you give it away.”

“My dad’s for Whittaker, anyhow,” says I.

“So’s mine,” says Mark, “but politics is
politics. How about your influence, Mr.
Wiggins?”

“You get it,” says Wiggins, sharp-like. “Go
tell Brown to go up to the court-room.”

We did that, and Brown was pretty surprised,
but he went. We followed along, and there was
Wiggins waiting for us. He told Brown what
Mark had said to him, and Brown began to
laugh as hard as he could, and then got serious.

“You win, kids,” says he, “providin’ you
can keep quiet.”

“We git the p-printin’?”

“You do,” says Brown, “but how Wiggins
and I will explain it to certain newspaper men,
particularly the Eagle Center *Clarion*, I don’t
know.”

“Was the Eagle Center *Clarion* goin’ to git
it?” says I.

“They figured on it pretty strongly,” says
Mr. Brown.

And that’s how we landed the county printing.
It was all by Mark Tidd’s using his brains. All
he needed was a hint, and he reasoned the thing
right out, and it was so like he reasoned it. It
made Mark pretty famous with politicians before
it was all done, for after the convention, when
Whittaker got the nomination, the story leaked
out, and everybody laughed at Brown and
Wiggins, and when folks found out Mark hadn’t
really heard a thing, but just jumped at conclusions
and made a bluff, they laughed harder
than ever.

That was all right, but what really counted
was that we got a dandy piece of business that
paid well and gave the paper a lot of reputation
and standing around the county. It got us a
lot of subscribers, too, because there are folks
that have to read about the county proceedings.

Mr. Wiggins took us to dinner and made a
lot of us, and didn’t hold a grudge at all. After
that we caught the train and went home, feeling
like we had done a pretty good day’s work.

CHAPTER XIII
============

The first thing we did when we got home was
to hunt up Plunk and Tallow to find out if
anything had been heard of Rock, but he was
still just as missing as ever—and even more so.

“Well,” says Mark, “we got to f-find him,
and find him quick. We need him in our business
and he needs us in hisn.”

“You hain’t goin’ to give him up to Jethro
like you said—honest, are you?”

“You b-b-bet I am,” says Mark, and there
was an end to that.

“To-morrow mornin’,” says he, “you
f-f-fellows be at my house at five o’clock, and
we’ll git after him. I got an idee,” says he.

“Five o’clock,” says I. “What’s the use of
goin’ to bed at all?”

Mark he sort of grinned and says: “This
Rock business is a sort of s-s-side issue with us.
What we’re doin’ for a livin’ is run a newspaper—and
we got to give consid’able time to it.”

That was Mark Tidd all over. Business was
first. He could tend to business more and
harder than any kid I ever heard of.

Next morning we were on hand when Mark
said, and off we started toward the place where
we lost track of Rock. Mark was as sure as
ever he was some place close around. “Bet I
can p-prove it pretty quick,” says he, “and after
I’ve proved it I bet I can go straight to where
he’s asleep this minute.”

“Shucks!” says I.

“Will you eat a r-rotten apple if I can’t?”
says Mark.

Well, I knew him pretty well, and when he
talked like that he was pretty sure he knew what
he was talking about, so I sort of backed down
as easy as I could. He didn’t say anything, but
just grinned aggravating.

There was just one farm out that way, and
Mark headed us in the yard and around to the
barn, where Mr. Soggs was milking.

“’Mornin’, Mr. Soggs,” says he.

“Up kinder early, hain’t ye?” says Mr.
Soggs.

“Ketchin’ worms,” says Mark. “Say, Mr.
Soggs, been missin’ anythin’ around here
l-l-lately?”

“How’d you know?” says Soggs. “You boys
hain’t campin’ out around here, be ye? ’Cause
if ye be, and it’s you that’s been a-pesterin’ my
wife, stealin’ pies off n the winder-sill and sich,
I’ll have the law on ye.”

“Not guilty,” says Mark. “What was
stolen?”

“A hull apple pie ’n’ a hunk of ham ’n’ half
a loaf of bread.”

“Too bad,” says Mark, but I could see a
twinkle in those little eyes of his. “Hope it
didn’t spoil your meal, Mr. Soggs.”

“I managed,” says Soggs, “I managed.”

“To be sure,” says Mark. “Well, we’ll be
movin’ on. G’by, Mr. Soggs.”

“G’by to ye,” says he, and off we went.

“There,” says Mark when we were out of
hearing. “Now what you got to say?”

“Same’s ever,” says I. “What’s a missin’
pie got to do with Rock?”

“Rock et that pie,” says Mark.

“Fiddle-de-dee,” says I, but I wasn’t so sure
about it. Mark he acted so *certain*.

“Now,” says he, “we’ll go and g-get him.”

He started off like he knew exactly where he
was going, and we followed. He led us along
the bluff above the river for a spell, and then
started down. In a minute I saw where we
were. We were just across from Butternut
Island, and right above our old cave—the cave
where Mark and Tallow hid Mr. Tidd’s turbine
a long while back, and where Sammy, the half-breed
Injun, used to live.

“Bet he hain’t there,” says I. “He couldn’t
ever find it.”

“He must ’a’ found it,” says Mark, “because
he’s in it right now.”

“How d’you know?” says I.

“Because,” says he, with another aggravating
grin, “there hain’t no other place for him
to be.”

Well, down we went, quiet-like, and peeked
in the cave. It was pretty dark there, but all
the same we could see something. It looked
like somebody asleep, and Mark he grinned at
me again.

“You sneaked up here and found him,”
says I.

“Didn’t,” says he; “jest figgered it out—and
there he is.”

He was that proud of himself just then that
you couldn’t touch him with a giraffe’s neck.

“Rock,” he called, soft-like, “Rock.”

Rock jumped up so sudden he was like to
have busted his head against the cave roof, and
looked around scared.

“It’s Mark Tidd and the f-f-fellers,” says
Mark. “Come on out.”

“How’d you find me?” says Rock, after he’d
got over being scared and surprised.

“Well,” says Mark, “I knew you must be
somewheres around, because you couldn’t of
got away. You’d be seen or somethin’. We
followed you to the river and then lost your
tracks, so I knew you were perty clost to here,
hidin’. This is the only good hidin’-place for a
long ways, so I f-figgered you *had* to be here—and
here you are.”

“Glad Jethro hasn’t as much brains as you
have, Mark.”

“Why?”

“Because he’d have found me, instead of
you.”

“But,” says Mark, “we’re a-goin’ to take
you back to him.”

Rock just looked at him.

“L-look here,” says Mark, “you got to trust
us if we’re goin’ to do you any good. And I’ll
tell you this, that with you gone there hain’t
the least chance of ever findin’ out about you.
You got to *be* there.... I shouldn’t wonder
if the Man With the Black Gloves would be
t-tickled to death, when he got to thinkin’ it
over, if you was to run away and he never heard
of you again. You’re a-goin’ back there because
that’s where you can do yourself the most
good and those f-fellers the most harm. See
it?”

“I see your idea,” says Rock, “but it don’t
look very pleasant.”

“Neither does l-livin’ in a cave and eat’n’
stolen pie look very good,” says Mark.

“But—” says Rock.

“Either you go back with us or we quit the
whole b-b-business,” says Mark. “We’re goin’
to let on to Jethro that we captured you, and
he’ll pay us money. And he’ll think you hate
us, if you act right, and he’ll trust us so’s we’ll
get a chance to nose around a little. I’m
mighty curious,” says he, “about that cat that
Mr. Wigglesworth wrote about, and where it’s
lookin’, and why; and I’d like a chance to l-l-look
for it.”

“Maybe you’re right,” says Rock.

“Course I am,” says Mark.

“All right,” says Rock, “but it isn’t very
pleasant being shut up and watched and treated
like they’ve treated me.”

“It won’t l-l-last long,” says Mark. “Come
on.”

We started back, with Rock looking pretty
dubious over his prospects. If he had known
Mark Tidd as well as we did he wouldn’t have
felt so much that way, though I’ll admit *I*
wouldn’t have been tickled to death if I’d been
in his place.

.. _`Jethro just rushed at us and grabbed a-holt of Rock, rough-like`:

.. figure:: images/illus-166.jpg
   :figclass: illustration
   :align: center
   :alt: Jethro just rushed at us and grabbed a-holt of Rock, rough-like.

   Jethro just rushed at us and grabbed a-holt of Rock, rough-like.

It didn’t take us a great while to get back
to the farm with Rock, and there was Jethro
walking up and down and growling and acting
pretty anxious. When he saw us turn in the
yard with Rock he just *rushed* at us and grabbed
a-holt of Rock, rough-like.

“Hey, there!” says Mark. “G-go easy.”

Jethro looked at him a second and let right
go, and then began to grin. “I guess,” says
he, “that you kids have earned your money,”
and he passed it over.

“Now,” says he to Rock, “what you mean by
runnin’ off, eh? Had a perty time of it, hain’t
you? Well, you let me ketch you tryin’ it again,
and you’ll wisht you’d been shut up in a cage
like a monkey in a circus. You bet you will.”

“G-got anythin’ to eat around this p-place?”
says Mark.

Jethro looked Mark over and laughed right
out. Not the kind of laugh a fellow likes, but
a noisy, bossy kind of a laugh. “You look like
you gen’ally got plenty,” says he.

“I do,” says Mark, short as could be, because
he don’t like to have folks talking about his
weight. Then he winked at Jethro and got
him off to one side.

“Say,” he says, “that kid’s goin’ to slip
away s-s-sure,” says he, “if he hain’t watched.
*You* can’t do it right, but us fellers can. What
you say to givin’ us a job guardin’ him? We’ll
see he’s kept here till it’s time for him to go
somewheres else.”

Jethro scratched his chin and thought it
over.

“How much?” says he.

“Fifty c-cents a day,” says Mark. “One of
us’ll be here all the t-time.”

“Good,” says Jethro. “I’ll jest take you up
on that. Keep your eye on him clost. Don’t
let him git out of this yard.”

“Don’t worry,” says Mark. “Now how
about s-s-somethin’ to eat?”

Jethro went in and brought us out some
pie and a fried-cake apiece—the bakery kind.
They weren’t very good, but we managed to
get away with them, and then Jethro went about
his business, having been fooled good by Mark,
and depending on him to keep his eye on Rock.

When he was gone Mark says to Rock, “Now
you s-s-see why we wanted to f-fetch you back?
We got the job w-watchin’ you, and we can be
with you all we want, and we can s-s-snoop
around this place as much as we want to. And
I can tell you I’ve got a heap of snoopin’ to do.
And we can see to it that nothin’ happens to
you, for one of us will be here all the time.”

“Mark Tidd,” says Rock, “you’re all right.
You’ve got more brains in your little finger
than I have in my head.”

Mark sort of threw up his head and pushed
out his chest, and his little eyes just *shone*, he
was so tickled. There’s nothing that pleases
him like getting praised when he knows it’s
coming to him.

“You kids go off and p-p-play somethin’,”
says he. “I want to nose around this p-place to
see if I can make any thin’ out of that writin’
Mr. Wigglesworth left. Seems to me l-like it
must have meant this p-place. Don’t it to
you?”

“Why?” says I.

“Because,” says he, “there don’t seem to be
anythin’ about the writin’ to indicate any other
p-place. This was the p-place he was always
at. This was where Rock was, and the w-writin’
concerns Rock, you can bet on that. What I
got to do is f-find a cat that’s always lookin’
in one d-direction, and then f-figger on from
there.”

“Sure,” says I, “you just find me a cat that
don’t never turn her head, and I’ll dig up a bag
of gold right under her feet. The cats I know
hain’t used to actin’ jest like that. Sometimes
they move; anyways, they wiggle their ears.
And the cat ’u’d *starve*,” says I. “How could a
cat live that didn’t move around any?”

“Binney,” says he, slow-like, “if you had as
m-many brains in your head as you got *words*
you’d be a wonder,” and off he went, holding all
three of his chins up in the air, he was so
disgusted.

“He’s a funny one, isn’t he?” says Rock,
looking after him, “but I’ll bet he’s more fun
than any kid I ever saw.”

“You bet he is,” says I.

“What d’you s’pose he’s tryin’ to find?” says
Rock. “It’s sure he doesn’t expect to discover
a *cat* that always sits still and looks right in one
direction. He’s got too much sense for that.”

“Mostly,” says I, “you don’t get on to what
Mark Tidd is up to until he’s done it.”

“And then,” says Tallow, “sometimes you
wisht you hadn’t. He’d rather play a joke on
somebody than do anything else in the world
except think up some business scheme. I’ll bet
he gets rich some day. Yes, sir, I’ll bet he gets
richer than his pa.”

“Is his father rich?” says Rock.

“Got billions,” says Tallow, “and Mark got
’em for him, too. We helped some, but Mark
did most of it. Mark’s father is a inventor, and
some men stole his turbine, and we fellers got
it back again.”

“Say,” says I, “let’s pester him a little to see
what he’ll do—about that cat, I mean.”

“Better not,” says Tallow.

“Go on,” says Plunk. “Maybe we can get
the best of him for once. Tell you what let’s
do. Let’s make up a poem about a cat that
don’t move, and recite it to him. It’ll tease
him to beat the band, because he hates
poetry.”

“Go ahead,” says I. “I hain’t no poet. It
keeps me busy talkin’ ordinary grammar.”

“Keeps you more ’n busy,” says Plunk. “If
I talked as bad grammar as you do I’d git
special lessons off’n the teacher.”

“Huh!” says I. “I guess I make folks understand
what I’m talkin’ about, anyhow. Git at
that poem.”

They sat still, thinking about it, and pretty
soon Tallow says, “How’d this do for a first
line?

    | “There was a boy and he was fat.
    | He went and hunted for a cat.”

“Fine,” says I. “Go ahead.”

After a while Plunk scratched around in his
head and dug up another line:

    | “It was a cat that didn’t stir,
    | And probably it didn’t purr.”

“Rotten,” says I, “but what can you expect
of sich a crowd?”

“See what *you* can do, then,” says Plunk.
“All right,” says I. “Listen to this:

    | “That was a funny kind of cat;
    | The boy was talking through his hat.”

“Good stuff,” says Tallow. “Best yet. Be
careful, Binney, or you’ll git somethin’ printed
if you don’t watch out.”

“Here he comes,” says Rock, and, sure enough,
there was Mark coming toward us slow, waddling
like a duck just before Thanksgiving. He came
and sat down without saying a word, and anybody
could see he was discouraged. Why,
discouragement just oozed out of him. We
snickered.

“Say, Mark,” says I, “we been improvin’ our
time while you was gone. We made up a
poem. Like to hear it?”

“Go ahead,” says he. “I guess I can s-s-stand
’most any thin’ to-day.”

“Here it is,” says I:

    | “There was a boy and he was fat.
    | He went and hunted for a cat.
    | It was a cat that didn’t stir,
    | And probably it didn’t purr.
    | That was a funny kind of cat;
    | The boy was talking through his hat.”

Mark didn’t say anything for a couple of
minutes, and we knew we had him. At last
we had stung him good, and he couldn’t think
of anything to say. I was that tickled I reached
over and poked Tallow in the ribs.

Mark looked at me sad-like, and then says:
“I got a l-l-little to add to that poem. How’s
this?

    | “He h-hunted for it all alone,
    | Because the f-f-fellers’ heads was bone,
    | And found a cat made out of *s-stone*!”

He almost yelled that last word, and looked
so tickled and excited I knew in a second that
he had the best of us again.

“What’s that?” says I.

“Come and see,” says he, and up we got and
followed him. He led us down the yard a piece
where we could see all those carved animals, and
then he took us around a clump of bushes and
pointed down. There was a *cat*! It was a
stone cat.

“Guess she don’t move frequent, d-does
she?” says he.

“For cat’s sake!” says Tallow.

Mark grinned. “You said it t-that time.
‘The boy was talkin’ through his hat,’” he
quoted from our poem. “Maybe he was—and
maybe not. I was lookin’ for somethin’ like
this. Now, how about cats that don’t stir, eh?
Guess this cat looks the same way all the time.
Don’t it?”

“Mark,” says I, “how did you ever think
of it?”

“It *had* to be this kind of a c-c-cat,” says he;
“that was p-plain enough.”

“Where she looks she walks,” says Plunk.
“Let’s walk.”

“Nix,” says Mark. “Jethro might be
l-l-lookin’. We want to foiler out this thing on
the quiet—and we’ll do it, you bet. We know
where to start from, and that’s the hardest part
of it.” He turned to Rock, “I guess we’re goin’
to haul you out of this scrape,” says he, “sooner
or later.... Now we got to git for h-home. I
got work to do.”

CHAPTER XIV
===========

“Listen,” says Mark Tidd that night.

“We’ve got to w-w-wake up and do some-thin’
with this newspaper.”

“Huh!” says I. “I thought we *had* been doin’
somethin’. Dunne’s I ever worked harder in
my life.”

“Yes,” says he, “but what’s it g-gettin’ us?
We’re p-payin’ our bills and not r-runnin’ in
debt, but that’s about all. No use havin’ a
b-business if you don’t make money out of it.”

“Go ahead,” says I. “I’m willin’ to make all
there is.”

“I’m goin’ ahead,” says he. “I’m goin’ to
start a scheme to get s-subscribers. I want a
t-thousand of ’em right off. Not jest f-folks
that buys the *Trumpet* on the street, but that
p-pays their money and has it all the year.
Like to git fifteen hunderd if I could.”

“Hain’t that many families in Wicksville,”
says I, “and no family wants more ’n one copy
of a paper, even if you do edit it,” says I.

“There’s other towns,” says he. “We got
the whole county to p-play with. The Eagle
Center *Clarion* come over here and tried to
t-t-take our town away from us. Well, turn
about’s fair play. Besides, there’s all the
farmers and settlements and what not.”

“If you say so,” says I, “it must be so.” I
was a little mite sarcastic, and he came right
back at me quick.

“If I say so it’s so,” says he, “because I don’t
jest let my t-t-tongue waggle like you. I don’t
gen’ally say somethin’ till I got somethin’ to
say, after I’ve f-figgered it out in my head.
The t-trouble with you, Binney, is you do most
of your t-thinkin’ with your stummick.”

I didn’t think of anything to say back to him.

“And,” says he, “you don’t do enough thinkin’
with t-t-that to give you a stummick-ache.”

“If you could think with your stummick,”
says I, “you’d have some mighty big thoughts,”
which was so, him having one of the biggest
stummicks in town. He just grinned and said
that was pretty good for me, and he had hopes
I might really say something smart some day
if I practised hard.

“Let’s see,” says he; “there’s folks around
solicitin’ subscriptions for magazines. They
must get p-p-paid somehow.”

“They do,” says I; “my aunt takes subscriptions,
and she gits so much for every one she
takes. They call it a commission, or somethin’
like that.”

“Wonder why we couldn’t work it ourselves,”
says he. “Not reg’lar agents,” says he, “but
some scheme to git a l-l-lot of folks int’rested in
gittin’ subscribers for us. If we could git a
woman’s missionary s-s-society to goin’ on it,
it would s-stir things up a lot. Them wimmin,
when they git set on anythin’, go after it all-fired
hot.”

“How about the Ladies’ Lit’ry Circle,” says
I, “and the Home Culture Club?”

“Binney,” says he, “that’s an idee. L-lemme
think. Um! ... Have to git ’em to w-w-workin’
ag’in’ each other somehow. Git ’em into a
s-squabble of some kind. That’d do it, sure.
How m-many wimmin b’long to those things?”

“There’s eighteen in the Circle,” says I,
“because ma b’longs, and they’re meetin’ at
our house to-morrow. I know there’s eighteen,
because ma was figgerin’ how much she’d have
to have to feed ’em. She says two sandriches
apiece would do for most clubs, but thirty-six
never’d fill up the wimmin in hern. She says
she wished she could find somethin’ stylish to
put into those sandriches that didn’t taste good.
Then, she says, she could brag about havin’
somethin’ special nice, and at the same time
nobody’d be able to make hogs of theirselves
eatin’ it.”

“Have her t-t-try p-p-perfumed soap,” says
Mark. “That’s swell, but nobody’d g-gobble
it much.”

“But,” says I, “I dunno how many’s in the
Home Culture. I kin find out, though.”

I did. There was an even twenty in it.

Well, Mark he sat down and pinched his
cheek awhile, and then he took to whittling,
which showed plain he was going after it hard.
He whittled up nigh half a cord of wood before
he got it all figgered out to suit him, and then he
says, “Binney, who’s boss of each of those
clubs?”

“Mis’ Strubber’s president of the Circle,”
says I, “and Mis’ Bobbin’s president of the
Home Culturers.”

“We’ll go s-s-see ’em,” says he. “We’ll give
’em all the lit’ry and all the culture they kin
use in a month of Sundays.”

So he dragged me off to Mrs. Strubber’s house.
Mrs. Strubber is one of them big women; not
fat, you know, but *big*. I calc’late she’s more ’n
six feet high, and she could lift a barrel of sugar
without turning a hair. But she’s smart.
Everybody says so, and she don’t deny it herself.
Most of the fellows are sort of scairt of her, but
Mark didn’t seem to be much afraid, for he
marched right up to her door and rang the bell.

She came to the door, with her sleeves rolled
up, wiping her hands on her apron, and when I
see how strong those arms looked I sort of edged
back so as to have the steps convenient if she
didn’t act pleased to see us.

“Well, boys?” says she in a voice perty near
as big as she was.

“Mis’ S-s-strubber,” says Mark, “we’ve come
to ask some advice from you. Everybody says
you’re the smartest woman in this t-t-town, so
we wouldn’t go to anybody else with an important
t-thing like this.”

Well, you should have seen her grin. My! but
she was tickled. “Come right in,” says she.
“I was jest in the middle of a batch of fried-cakes,
but I calc’late Milly kin finish ’em up.
Like fresh fried-cakes?” says she.

“Not g-gen’ally,” says Mark, “but I’ve heard
a lot about yourn. Folks says they melt in
your mouth.”

“A-hum!” says Mrs. Strubber, perducing some
of them fried-cakes. “You’re a onusual p’lite
young man, Mark Tidd. I wisht other boys
would pattern after you.”

“Yas’m,” says Mark, his mouth full of fried-cake.

“What kin I do for you?” says she. “Don’t
hurry. Eat them cakes and don’t try to talk
till you’re done. You might strangle,” says she.

“Mis’ Strubber,” says Mark, “I’ve heard
some argimint in Wicksville over these t-t-two
wimmin’s clubs—the Circle,” he says, “and the
Home Culturers.”

“A-hum!” says Mrs. Strubber, drawing herself
up like a rooster looking for trouble—not a
banty rooster. No, sir, one of them great big
Barred Rocks.

“Yes,” he says, “there’s some t-talk, and I
figger it ought to be s-settled once for all.
’Course most folks agrees that *you’re* the smartest
woman the’ is, but a few hain’t got sense enough
to own up to it. But quite a few f-folks is
divided over which of the two clubs is the
brainiest, and which does the m-most good here,
and all that. Now, for me, there hain’t any
doubt at all. But it ought to be s-s-settled, and
I f-figger the Wicksville *Trumpet* ought to t-take
a hand, it bein’ literature, kind of.”

“A-hum!” says she, scowling as black as a
pail of axle grease.

“So,” says he, “I got to t-thinkin’ it over,”
he says, “and it l-l-looked like the public
demanded that question should get settled once
for all. Now, if *you* kin see your way clear to
come in with me, the *Trumpet*\’ll announce a
contest between the clubs, and the thing’ll be
decided forever. Not only,” says he, “as to
b-brains, but as to c-cookin’.”

“If them Home Culturers,” says Mrs.
Strubber, “got the *nerve*,” she says, “to come
into a contest ag’in’ us, I guess we got the self-respect
to give ’em the come-down that’s due
’em.”

“Good,” says Mark. “I f-figgered you’d think
that way.”

“What kind of a contest?” says she.

“Sev’ral kinds,” says he, “endin’ with a big
display of all kinds of cookin’, and two nights
with big dinners, one to be served by each club.
There’ll be the argimint contest, and it’s always
p-practical results that shows there, hain’t it,
Mis’ Strubber?”

“You bet it is,” says she.

“So,” says he, “I kind of reasoned out that
we’d let results tell. Now,” he says, “the kind
of argimints that counts is *sellin’* argimints.
And you got to sell somethin’ hard to sell, and
everybody’s got to sell the same thing.”

“Mark Tidd,” says she, “that’s a splendid
idee.”

“I was wonderin’ what you could t-tackle,”
says he. “It ought to be somethin’ havin’ to
do with b-brains.”

“Sure thing,” says she.

“Books, maybe,” says he. “Or maybe
s-somethin’ that would be harder ’n books.”

“My husband’s sister’s second daughter,” says
she, “sells magazine subscriptions. She says it’s
the hardest thing there is—except newspaper
subscriptions. She tackled that, but she says it
was too much for her.”

“Um!” says Mark. “I bet it wouldn’t be too
hard for *you*.”

“A-hum!” says Mrs. Strubber. “I calc’late I
could do it on a pinch.”

“Then,” says Mark, “let’s settle on that-sellin’
n-n-newspaper subscriptions. But what
p-paper can you git to let you? It’ll be p-perty
hard, won’t it?”

She thought quite a spell and guessed it
would be. Then all of a sudden she bust
right out and clapped her hands together,
“Why,” she says, “you’re int’rested in this,
and you got a paper. Couldn’t we git you to
let us use the *Trumpet*?”

Mark he sat back and frowned and sort of
shook his head, but after a minute he says,
deliberate-like, “Well,” says he, “I guess I’d
be willin’ to do that for a cause of this kind.
But,” says he, “it’s concedin’ consid’able.”

“Oh,” says she, “thank you, Mark! It’s
awful good of you to let us do that. But what’s
the rest of your scheme?”

“Why,” says he, “every year’s subscription
you sell will mean ten votes, and the side sellin’
the most will be showed to be the smartest
arguers, and the smartest arguers, everybody
admits, is the smartest f-folks all around. Then,
at the end, there’ll be a dinner served by the
Circle, and one served by the Home Culturers,
that nobody can go to but subscribers to the
*Trumpet*. That’ll help sell the s-s-subscriptions.
The night after the second dinner’ll be the
cookin’ show, admission included when you sell
a s-subscription, and every subscriber’ll have
one vote as to which club’s wimmin is the b-best
cooks. That’ll about shut up every argimint as
to which is the s-smartest and usefulest.
’Cause,” says he, “the ones that win both them
things will p-prove it so nobody kin say a
word.”

“Mark Tidd,” says she, “you’re a smart
boy.”

“Like the idee?” says he, looking tickled to
death.

“You bet,” says she. “How’ll we start it?”

“Why,” says he, “you have a m-meetin’ of
your club and git up a challenge to them Home
Culturers, darin’ ’em to contest that way ag’in’
you. I’ll p-publish it in the *Trumpet*, and it
bein’ public that way, they won’t dast to refuse,
and you’ll have ’em. See? And,” says he, “as
a example of p-public spirit,” he says, “the
*Trumpet* will give a p-prize to the winners equal
to t-t-ten per cent.,” he says, “of all the subscriptions
taken. It’ll be,” says he, “a set of books,
real brainy books, for the winnin’ club always to
have in its l-l-library.”

“Mark,” says she, “you’re that generous!”

“Generous!” I thought to myself, for I knew
mighty well Mark would be tickled to pay near
twice that much to git subscriptions.

“I’ll call that meetin’ for to-morrow,” says
she, “and have the challenge ready so’s you can
publish it in the next paper.”

“Got a picture of you?” says he. “I’d like to
p-print it the day the challenge comes out.”

Well, the way she jerked one out of the plush
album and gave it to him would have made you
scairt. She jest *tore* it out of the page without
waiting to draw it out of the slits.

“Mark Tidd,” says she, “the club’ll give you
a special vote of thanks for this,” she says.

Mark he said something sugary to her and
then we left, and he kept his face straight till we
got around the corner. Then he just leaned up
against a tree and shook like a plate of jelly. I
don’t know as I ever saw him laugh harder, and
I laughed, too, though it wasn’t so funny to me,
for I was thinking what a slick way he had about
him. My goodness! I’d hate to have Mark Tidd
want me to do something I didn’t want to,
because, before I knew it, he’d have me all
through with it.

We went back to the office, where Plunk and
Tallow were keeping shop, and who should be
there but the Man With the Black Gloves. Yes,
sir, he just went in ahead of us, and he was
writing another advertisement to be put in the
paper. It went like this:

.. container:: center

    Jethro: Same time. Same place. Important. G. G. G.

“Well,” says Mark, when he had gone out,
“I guess we got to m-make another t-trip to
that bridge.”

CHAPTER XV
==========

Next afternoon late Mrs. Strubber came
in with a challenge to the Home Culturers,
all drawn up and ready to print. Mark had
sent her picture away to have a cut made, and
as soon as the challenge came in we took it right
out to Tecumseh Androcles Spat to have him
set it in type. He read it over once, and then he
read it over twice, and then he reached for his
coat.

“Where you g-g-goin’?” asks Mark.

“Far, far away,” says he, moving toward the
door.

“What d’you m-mean?” says Mark.

“I’ve lost my taste for this employment,” says
he. “The sweetness of the job got worn off as
soon as I read that paper. I’m a peaceful man,
Mark Tidd. I hain’t never carried no weapons,
and I regard those that seek for warfare and
strife as not havin’ the necessary quantity of
brains. I’ll admit,” says he, “that I’ve participated
in a couple of riots and a few fights, but it
wasn’t of my own free will and accord. Furthermore,
and you can take the word of Tecumseh
Androcles Spat for it, the newspaper business
hain’t as safe as knittin’ socks, anyhow, but
when you start to call down trouble onto yourself,
like this challenge will call it down, then it’s
time for a man who’s set up as many almanacs
as I have, and is steeped in wisdom, to go and
enlist in a regiment bound to fight Injuns.”

“Mr. Spat,” says Mark, “what in the world
are you talkin’ about?”

“You’ll see,” says he. “Wait till them
enraged wimmin start besiegin’ this office. Wait
till they jam into the place bristlin’ with hatpins
and dignity. Wait till the full awfulness
of what’s goin’ to happen begins to occur, and
then you’ll think of Tecumseh Androcles Spat
and regret you cast aside his wise words with
scorn.”

“Shucks!” says Mark. “Those ladies will get
us a wad of s-s-subscriptions.”

“At what a cost!” says he.

“Tecumseh Androcles Spat,” says Mark, “be
you goin’ to f-f-fail us when we need you most,
eh? Be you g-goin’ to desert us, carryin’ away
the wisdom and experience we can’t spare?
Lemme ask you, how d-d-do you s’pose we can
git along without you to advise us? If t-t-trouble
should come,” says he, “who would git us out of
it if you was g-g-gone?”

“Hum!” says Spat.

Mark winked at me.

“See what you’ve made of this p-p-paper
already,” says he. “L-look what you kin do
before you’re through. D’you know how f-folks
in this town speak about you, Mr. Spat? D’you
know you’ve been spoke of for the State Legislature?
And you’d go away and desert Wicksville
and us on account of a few wimmin that
couldn’t hurt a-a-anythin’.”

“Mark Tidd,” says Spat, “it seems like I’m
duty bound to stay, but mark my words, which
is words of experience, paid for with groans and
misery, you’re goin’ to wish you was locked into
a cage with ravenin’ wildcats and howlin’
hyenas before this contest is over. I’ll stay,
but I’ll suffer. I’ll stay to save you boys from
the results of your rashness.... Now gimme
back that challenge.”

He went back to work and set it up, and more
stuff Mark had written explaining all about the
contest, and Mrs. Strubber’s picture was to be
printed right in the middle of all of it, with
some glowing and complimentary facts about
her and her club. The whole thing was to be
printed on the first page of the *Trumpet*.

While this was going on Mark and the rest
of us was pretty busy getting all the news of the
county fair that was going on, and the night
before the *Trumpet* came out we had a heap of
writing to do. It was my job to write little
items about folks and things that happened.
Mark said he wanted enough to fill a column, so
I set to work, and it *was* work, I can tell you. I
did more chawing of my pencil than writing, and
it took me about a dozen times as long to do it
as it took Mark to write three times as much.
But I was pretty proud of what I’d done when
I was through with it. I figgered it would be
about the most interesting part of the paper, and
it did come pretty close to being that. When I
handed it to Mark I says, “There, if that
hain’t perty good newspaper writin’ I hope I
don’t ever git to eat another fried-cake.”

Mark read it over, and every once in a while
he would look up at me and chuckle, and then
he says, “Binney, if you’d done this apurpose
it would be g-great.”

“I done it apurpose,” says I. “Think I done
all that writin’ by accident, like a feller would
stub his toe and accidentally skin his nose?”

“Um!” says he. “We’ll p-p-print it jest as it
stands, and say, ‘By Binney Jenks,’ at the top,
so everybody’ll know you d-did it. That,” says
he, “may save the l-lives of some of the rest
of us.”

“What you mean?” says I.

“I’ll r-read ’em to you,” says he. This was
the first he read:

“‘Mr. Bud Drimple took first prize for the
fattest pig at the fair.’” Mark peeked at me
out of his little eyes that was twinkling like
everything. “Maybe Bud Drimple *was* the
f-f-fattest pig there and ought to have got the
p-prize,” says he, “but he’ll hate to be t-told
so.”

I didn’t say a word. Mark read another.

“‘Many folks asked Jacob Wester what he
exhibited at the fair. He said it was a cow.’”
Mark giggled. “What did it look like, Binney,
if so many f-f-folks was uncertain about it?
Did it resemble a l-locomotive or a sewin’
m-machine?”

“Huh!” says I. “You think you’re smart.”

“No,” says he, “I t-think you be. Here’s
another: ‘Mrs. Hob Sweet was among those
watching the prize Jersey cow. Many claimed
she was the finest piece of live stock on the
grounds.’ ... Which, Binney, the Jersey or
Mis’ Sweet?”

“Anybody,” says I, “would know I meant the
Jersey.”

“‘Jed Tingle,’” he read again, “‘who just got
m-m-married to Myrtie Wise, bought him a new
horse-whip, for which he s-s-says he’s got
pressing need lately.’” Mark shook his head.
“I dunno,” says he, “but we might get sued in
court for accusin’ a man of thrashin’ his wife.”

“I didn’t,” says I. “That wasn’t why he
had pressin’ need of that whip; it’s because, as
everybody knows, he’s been stuck with a balky
colt.”

“All right,” says Mark. “How about this?
‘Dave Ward made two purchases at the fair.
One was a pie baked by Mrs. John Baird, and
sold at the Methodist ladies’ booth. The other
was a bottle of pain-killer.’”

“What’s wrong with that?” I says.

“N-nothin’,” says he. “It’s good sense.
You’d know if you ever ate a pie of hern. Dave
was wise, but maybe Mis’ Baird won’t like bein’
twitted with it.”

“Git out!” says I, beginning to feel uncomfortable.
“You twist around everything a feller
says.”

“This,” says he, “is m-mighty descriptive.
‘Crowds stood around the merry-go-round
watching it go around and around.’”

I didn’t say a word. He was makin’ me
mad.

There were a lot more of them, but I told Mark
he needn’t bother to read me any others. I had
enough. The way *he* read them made them
sound altogether different than I had meant
them, but I guess he read what I wrote, all right.
Which goes to show that folks ought to be
careful what they write, and be sure they mean
what they are saying. I’ll bet lots of trouble
gits started just that way. One fellow writes
something that’s all right, but says it careless,
and the fellow that reads it thinks something
mean is said about him. Then, *bingo*!

Anyhow, Mark put them in the paper just as
they were, and the paper came out. You can
believe me or not, just as you want to, but the
next two or three days I was pretty scarce
around there, especially after Hob Sweet dropped
into the office with a horse-whip and inquired
after me anxious, like he was particular desirous
of seeing me. I saw him coming and made
up my mind that some place else would be
more comfortable, so, I skinned out of the back
door.

While I was making for a safe spot I almost
bumped into Jed Tingle and Mrs. Baird, who
were standing on a corner, each one with a
*Trumpet* clutched in their hand, and talking mad
as anything. I didn’t stop to mention anything
to them, but cut out around them so as not to
disturb them a mite.

Mark knew where I’d be and he sent Plunk
out with a basket of grub and a warning to keep
away from home till it was bedtime, and then
to sneak in pretty average cautious, because,
he said, there had been a procession of folks
calling at my house all day to look for me, and
he judged my father was some put out at being
bothered that much.

Well, that blew over after a while. Folks
sort of forgot it in the excitement of the battle
between the Literary Circle and the Home
Culturers. No sooner had that challenge got
around than Mrs. Bobbin rushed into the office
with an answer to it and *her* picture. And her
answer wasn’t what you’d call diplomatic.
Well, Mrs. Strubber’s challenge wasn’t as gentle
as it might have been.

Mrs. Bobbin’s paper says:

    The members of the Home Culture Club has read
    the challenge put out by Mrs. Strubber and them other
    wirnmin that calls themselves the Literary Circle, and the
    idea of their being smarter than the Home Culturers
    made us all laugh till we was sick.

    We’re tickled to death to contest with them in any
    kind of a contest from washing dishes to building a house.
    If they can do a single thing that we can’t do a heap
    better, why, now’s the time to show us. We’re going
    into this thing, and when we’re through somebody in
    this town is going to be made to look mighty foolish—which
    is their natural way of looking.

There was more of it, but that’s enough to
show how friendly it was and what a pleasant
and sociable little contest it was going to be.

But what Mrs. Bobbin said was singing a
baby to sleep when you come to compare it with
what was said later and what was done later.
The town took sides, and there was more bitter
feelings than there was before the election when
we voted on local option. Yes, sir, and more
fight, too, because every husband of a club-woman
figured he had to let on he was certain
his wife was smartest and the best cook and the
whole bag of tricks, and some of them men
didn’t have any arguments to offer except what
they could double up in their fists. Why, you
could go down back of the fire-hall and see a
fight almost any time of day!

The contest was to run two weeks, ending up
with those two dinners and the exhibit of cooking,
but before twenty-four hours was gone by
it looked like maybe there wouldn’t be enough
folks left undamaged to be in at the finish.

Folks didn’t dare stick their heads out of doors
for fear of bumping into a woman after their
subscription to the *Trumpet*. They just dug in
like it was a matter of life and death. Mark
watched it and grinned, for, says he, if there’s
a man, woman, child, cat, dog, or parrot in
Wicksville that hain’t a subscriber for our paper
before this thing is over, it’s because he’s up so
high in a balloon that nobody can reach him.

As for Tecumseh Androcles Spat, he worked
with a baseball bat right beside him, and the
way to both doors barricaded with packing-boxes
so nobody could get to him. And when
he went out he pulled up the collar of his coat
and he jerked his hat down over his eyes so
nobody would recognize him. He said, as far
as he was concerned, he’d a heap rather have a
whole skin and no excitement than to be having
all the fun in the world, but obliged to see it out
of a bed in the hospital.

Some of us had to be in the office all the time
these days, and we drew sticks to see who it
would be every morning. I lost three days
hand running, so I didn’t get out to see Rock, nor
out to the bridge when Jethro and G. G. G. met
there the night that was set. No, I just hung
around the office and took in subscriptions that
the women brought in, and gave them out
receipts, and talked to them, and kept both sides
happy, like Mark told me to do. He said I was
to do what I could to make both parties sure
they was winning, but not to give out any real
facts about how many subscribers was got.
Which I did as good as I could.

Mark and Tallow went to the bridge, and it
seemed from what G. G. G. told Jethro that the
man called Pekoe, who had brought Rock to
Wicksville, was doing something that hadn’t
been expected of him, and that G. G. G. was
startled over it and wanted Jethro to take extra
pains to see that Pekoe didn’t get to see Rock.
From what Mark and Tallow could gather, this
Pekoe was coming to see Rock, but they didn’t
know why—G. G. G. and Jethro didn’t.

“What he’s up to I don’t know,” G. G. G. told
Jethro. “He don’t *know* anything. He can’t
*tell* the boy anything. But something’s in the
air. You keep them apart.”

“You bet I will,” says Jethro.

When Mark and Tallow came back, Mark
says, “F-fellers, keep your eyes p-peeled for a
strange man. We want to know it the m-minute
this Pekoe strikes Wicksville.”

So, not having anything else to do but run a
paper, and dodge folks that wanted to lick me,
and help with the contest, and do the chores at
home, and play some, and a few other little
things, I had to help keep my eye open to find a
man I’d never saw and didn’t have any idea
what he looked like. Mark was always reasonable
about what he wanted you to do. He never
asked anybody to do more than *twict* as much
as it was humanly possible for anybody to
manage.

CHAPTER XVI
===========

I’ll bet you’ve forgotten all about Spragg,
the Eagle Center *Clarion* man. If you have,
you want to remember him again, for the time
was coming fast when he would be right on hand
like a case of mumps. Not that mumps are
generally on hand. When I had them they
reached from one ear right around to the other,
and Mark Tidd didn’t have half so much face
as I did.

Well, one day about the time the contest was
getting nicely started up I saw Spragg in town.
He’d waited till things cooled down, and was
there at the hotel, nosing around just as if nothing
had happened.

“Howdy-do, Mr. Spragg!” says I, with my
face as sober as a judge. “Hope you’re feelin’
well and gittin’ all the exercise you need.”

“I’m feelin’ well,” says he, “but I’m short of
exercise. I’ll git it, though, and don’t you lose
sight of that. You kids think you’re pretty
smart, but my name’s spelled S-p-r-a-g-g, see?”

“No,” says I, not seeing at all. What did
*that* have to do with it, I wondered; but, just
for luck, I thought I’d josh him a little. “I
thought your name was spelled M-u-d. Looked
like that awhile back.”

“Go on,” says he. “Keep heapin’ it up.
Perty soon I’ll have enough ag’in’ you boys to
make it worth my while to git even. And when
I set out to git even I do it with a plane,”
says he.

“Reg’lar carpenter, hain’t you? I didn’t know
but a man with a name spelled like yours would
even things off with a butter-knife, or maybe
a nursin’-bottle.”

“You better move away from here,” says he,
“before I lose my temper.”

“Huh!” says I, moving off where I’d have a
good start if he came after me. “Folks that loses
their temper in Wicksville gen’ally gits all the
help they want findin’ it ag’in.”

“Go ahead,” says he; “get all the laugh
you can out of it now. In another day or two
you’ll be laughin’ crossways of your mouth.
What would you smart newspaper kids say to a
daily in Wicksville, eh? Reg’lar city daily.
Guess that would sort of put the lid on that old
weekly of yours, wouldn’t it? Spragg is my
name. Begins with a capital S, remember that.”

I wasn’t going to let on to him that what he
said worried me, so I said to him: “You’d have
to be spryer ’n you be now to git out a daily.
The way you move around I guess a monthly’s
about *your* speed.”

He made a move after me and I scooted down
the street to tell Mark. He wasn’t in, though,
and Tallow said he and Plunk had gone out to
see Rock at the farm.

“When he comes back,” says I, “he’ll have
all the rock he wants, and it looks to me like
it would be rock bottom. We’re goin’ to be
up against a daily paper here.”

An hour after in comes Mark and Plunk.

“B-been studyin’ the yard there at Rock’s,”
says he, “and I c-c-can’t make head nor tail to
that message of Mr. Wigglesworth’s. Found
the cat, all right, and w-w-walked where she
l-looked. M-measured off a hunderd and six
feet, but there we come to n-ninety degrees in
the shade. Stumped us. Found the shade, all
right, but it wasn’t ninety degrees. Held a
t-thermometer, and it wasn’t but sixty-seven.”

“It’s goin’ to be ninety degrees in the shade
of this office,” says I. “Spragg’s back and is
goin’ to start a daily to run us out of business.”

“How d’you know?” says he.

“Spragg says so,” I told him.

“Hum!” says he. “I sort of d-doubt it.
Spragg don’t look like he had money enough or
gumption enough.”

“Maybe somebody’s backin’ him,” says I.

“Might be,” says he. “Guess I b-b-better
look into it.”

So he and I went out together, leaving Plunk
and Tallow to mind the office.

“A d-daily,” says he, “would have hard
sleddin’ here. Don’t b’lieve it would make a
go. But while Spragg was t-tryin’ it he might
hurt us a lot. Two newspapers in a little town
l-like this can’t m-make money.”

“Neither can one,” says I. “Anyhow we
hain’t got rich. Might as well be two as one,
so far’s I can see.”

“The *Trumpet’s* goin’ to pay,” says he, and
he shut his jaw tight, like he does when he’s
made up his mind to do something or bust.
“Spragg or no Spragg, we’re goin’ to make a
reg’lar paper of the *Trumpet*—and git money out
of it. Don’t go gittin’ limp in the s-s-spine,”
he says.

It don’t take long in Wicksville to find out
what’s going on, because there isn’t much going
on, anyhow, and as soon as something turns up
and one man hears of it, why, he can’t rest or
eat till he’s run all over peddling it to everybody
he sees. And every man *he* tells has to start
out the same way, so in a half-hour from the
time a thing starts almost everybody in town is
out looking for somebody to tell it to. That’s
what makes it so hard to run a newspaper.
Everybody knows everything he reads in the
paper as soon as the editor does. I guess about
the only reason folks subscribe to the *Trumpet*
at all is to see if their own name is mentioned,
or to say to somebody else: “Huh! There
hain’t never no news in this paper. I knew
every doggone thing printed in it two days
before the paper come out.”

Well, that’s why it wasn’t hard for us to find
out that Spragg really was planning to start
a daily paper in town, nor to figger out that he
didn’t have much money to start it with himself.
He was trying to start what he called a
co-operative paper. Co-operative means that
one man gets a lot of other men to put their
money into a thing with the idea that they’ll
all get some good out of it, whereas nobody gets
anything but the fellow that starts it.

Spragg’s notion was to put in a little money
himself and to have the merchants and business
folks in town put in the rest. His argument was
that there was money in running a newspaper,
and the money was made out of the advertising.
So, if the men that put in the advertisements and
paid money for them owned the newspaper
themselves, why, they would just be paying the
money to themselves, and the subscribers would
pay the cost of getting out the paper. So the
advertisers would be getting their advertisements
practically for nothing. It sounded
dangerous to me.

I guess it worried Mark some, too, for if
merchants could get their advertising in a daily
practically without costing them a cent, what
would they spend any money in the *Trumpet*
for?

Spragg was just talking the thing up, but he
was talking a lot, and it looked like he had the
business men interested. Where Spragg came
in was that he was to be the editor and have a
salary and a share of the profits.

Mark went and sat down on my steps and
began to whittle like he always does when he’s
got a puzzle on his mind. He whittled and
whittled and didn’t say a word for an hour.
Then he looked at me out of his twinkling little
eyes that you could hardly see over his fat cheeks
and says:

“I guess Spragg’s idee is to get these f-f-fellers
all into the paper. They’ll p-put their money in
to start it, and p-perty soon they’ll see that their
advertisements hain’t free. Not by a big
s-sight. And p-perty soon they’ll get disgusted
and along Spragg’ll come and buy their shares
of the paper dirt cheap. He f-f-figgers to come
out at the other end with a daily p-paper
that didn’t cost him hardly anything. And
then he’ll be where he can m-make some
money.”

“Yes,” says I, “because by that time, with
all the stores not givin’ us any advertisements,
we’ll be busted.”

“That,” says he, “is how Spragg f-f-figgers it.
But,” says he, “I figger it some d-different.”

“How do you figger it?” says I.

“I f-f-figger,” says he, stuttering like a gas
engine just starting up on a cold morning, “that
he hain’t ever g-goin’ to start any paper at all,
and that we’re goin’ to keep all the business we’ve
got, and that Mr. Spragg’ll wisht he never heard
of Wicksville or of the *Trumpet* or of us.”

“Sounds good,” says I, “and I’ve seen you
pull out of a lot of deep holes, but this one
looks to me like it would be too much for you.
I guess this time, Mark, you’re up against it
hard.”

“Binney,” says he, “if Spragg b-beats us then
you can p-paint a sign sayin’ ‘idiot’ and pin it
on my b-back, and I’ll wear it a month.”

You notice he said “us.” That was just
like him always. He wasn’t what you’d call
modest, but he was square with us other fellows
that didn’t think as quick and as shrewd as he
did. We all got the credit for what was done
if he could fix it that way. But I don’t believe
many folks were fooled by it. They knew Mark
Tidd and they knew us.

“You can always catch f-f-folks with a
scheme,” says he, “that makes ’em think they’re
gettin’ somethin’ for n-nothin’. But,” he says,
“I hain’t ever seen anybody git somethin’
without pay in’ about what it was worth.”

“Yes,” says I, “if you coop a watermelon out
of Deacon Burgess’s garden, why, you pay for
it by tearin’ your pants on his barb-wire fence,
or by gittin’ the stummick ache.”

“That’s about the idee,” says he.

“What you goin’ to do first?” I says.

“Haven’t f-figgered it out yet,” says he.
Then he went to talking about the contest.

“How many subscriptions have we got in?”
says he.

“Lemme see,” says I, “this is the third day
it’s been goin’ and yesterday we had seventy.
Tallow said we got in twenty-six this morning.
That makes ninety-six.”

“Huh!” says he. “They hain’t got warmed up
yet. But we’ll get ’em good perty soon. They’ll
start comin’ strong.”

We walked down the street and in front of
the post-office was a crowd standing around a
couple of men that was arguing so you could
have heard them in the next township. Mark
and I ran over to see what was going on, because
newspaper men always ought to be right where
things are happening. We edged into the
crowd and found out it was Mr. Strubber and
Mr. Bobbin, and they was quarreling about how
smart their wives was.

“Huh!” says Strubber. “Your wife wouldn’t
never have dared to git into a contest with my
wife if she hadn’t been forced. She was cornered
and dassen’t back down.”

“Strubber,” says Bobbin, “I hain’t denyin’
your wife has her p’ints. There’s ways where
she can beat my wife all holler. Why, when it
comes to takin’ the broom and chasin’ her
husband around the house Mrs. Bobbin wouldn’t
even tackle the job at all. She knows without
tryin’ that Mrs. Strubber kin beat her good and
plenty there.”

“You mean,” hollered Strubber, “that my
wife chases me with a broom? You dast say
that? Why, you miserable little swiggle-legged,
goggle-eyed, slumgullion, Mrs. Strubber’s as
gentle as a lamb! Yes, sir, she’s all brain, that’s
what she is. If you was to take Mrs. Strubber’s
brain out and lay it on top of that thing *your*
wife calls a brain, it ’u’d be like coverin’ a pea
with a bushel basket.”

“Sure!” says Bobbin. “It’s big all right,
but you’re right when you compare it to a bushel
basket. It’s as thin and empty as any bushel
basket in Michigan.”

Strubber pretended to look at Bobbin careful,
and then he laughed out loud. “Folks tells
me,” says he, “that you really eat the stuff
Mrs. Bobbin cooks.”

“You bet I do,” says Bobbin.

“Lookin’ at you,” says Strubber, “I’m prepared
to admit it. Nothin’ else would make
you look that way. I always wondered what
made you sich a peeked, ornery, yaller-complected,
funny-lookin’ little runt like you be.
You must ’a’ had a tough constitution when you
got married, or you wouldn’t never have survived
all these years—if what you *be* can be called
survivin’. As for me, I guess I’d rather not
’a’ survived at all as to be what that cookin’
has made of you.”

“Huh!” says Bobbin. “I hain’t no tub of
lard like *you* be. What I git is good wholesome
food that makes muscles and brain. You get
fed on sloppy stuff to fatten you. You know
what we feed hogs, don’t you, eh? Gather it
up out of pails at folks’ back doors. It fats up
the hogs, too. Well, Mrs. Strubber, she uses
that same method on you.”

“Be you comparin’ my wife’s cookin’ to
*swill*?” yelled Strubber, wabbling all over like
a bowl of jelly he was that mad.

“Not comparin’,” says Bobbin. “And what
goes for Mrs. Strubber goes for all the rest of
them Lit’ry Circle wimmin.”

“Eh? What’s that?” bellowed another man
from the crowd. “I want you should know
*my* wife b’longs to that Lit’ry Circle, and
the finest wimmin in town does. Wimmin
b’longs to that that would be ashamed to be
one of them Home Culturers. Why, nobody
b’longs to the Home Culturers but folks the
Lit’ry Circle wimmin wouldn’t have nothin’ to
do with.”

“Is that *so*?” another fellow shouted, and
began working close to the row. “My wife’s a
Home Culturer, and if you think I’ll stand by to
let a spindle-shanked, knock-kneed, bald-headed,
squint-eyed wampus like you say sich things,
why, you’re mighty badly mistook. Listen
here. ’Tain’t doin’ no good to stand here
fightin’ about our wives. There’s a contest on
to see which ones is the best. I don’t need no
contest to tell *me*. But us men better shut up
and let the contest go ahead. Then you Lit’ry
Circle fellers will have to hunt your holes. Why,
doggone you, them Home Culturers will git two
subscriptions to your one. Hear *me*. And
when it comes to cookin’ and gittin’ up a meal
of vittles—well, jest wait, that’s all I got to
say.”

He turned around and began to push out of
the crowd, and so did the other men. I guess
they judged they was gettin’ perty close to a
fight, and that jest talking wouldn’t answer the
purpose much longer. I notice that men is
willing to stand and rave and tear and talk jest
so long as it hain’t likely to go any farther. But
the minute things begins to look like business,
and spectators is all keyed up to see a fight, why,
the talking stops and the folks that started it all
begins to disappear fast. Mostly a man that
talks won’t fight, and a man that fights keeps his
mouth tight shut.

Mark and I went along toward the office.

“L-l-looks to me,” says he, grinning like all
git out, “as if f-folks was beginnin’ to git a bit
het up over the contest.”

“Yes,” says I. “I hope both sides don’t
turn to and get het up at us. If they do,” says
I, “the South Pole is about the only place we’ll
be safe, and maybe not there.”

“I don’t care,” says he, “as long as it gits us
s-s-subscriptions.”

Which was just exactly like him. Results was
what counted.

CHAPTER XVII
============

Next morning Mark and Plunk and I went
out to the Wigglesworth farm to see Rock.
We walked right into the yard like we always
do, now that Jethro thinks we’re working for
him, but Rock wasn’t in sight. Jethro was,
though. He was fussing around the side yard
and we walked over to where he was.

“Howdy, Jethro!” says Mark, and Jethro
turned his face toward us. He had one of the
biggest and best black eyes I ever saw. It was
a regular socdolager of a black eye—one of the
kind that runs way down on your cheek and
that starts to wiggling and twitching every once
in a while like a blob of jelly.

“Howdy!” says Jethro, short-like.

“Run into somethin’?” says I.

“Yes,” says he, and felt of his eye.

“I run into one of them things once,” says
Plunk, who talks sometimes when he ought to
keep his mouth shut. “There was a boy on the
other end of it, and he was mad at me.”

“There wasn’t no boy on the other end of
this,” says Jethro.

“Where’s Rock?” says Mark.

“Around the house somewheres,” says Jethro.
“Yell and he’ll come.”

So we left Jethro and went around back of
the house and yelled for Rock. In a minute
he came, and you could see right off that he was
either sick or something. He wasn’t exactly
pale, but he looked like he’d like to be pale. His
eyes was kind of big and hollow like he hadn’t
slept much.

“Never was so glad to see anybody in my
life,” says he, and he said it like he meant it.

“How d-d-did Jethro git his b-black eye?”
says Mark.

“I don’t know,” says Rock, and he shivered a
little. “Something has been happening. I
don’t know what. I’m scared, and I’m not
ashamed to own it up. Last night, just after
I went to bed, somebody came to the door.
After that I heard voices down-stairs, and then
a whopping racket like somebody was smashing
the furniture. Then there was a noise like a
man was dragging a bag of flour up-stairs—way
up into the third story. I didn’t dare sneak out
to see what it was, but I couldn’t get to sleep.
In about an hour I heard something moving
around over my head somewhere. And then
somebody began to thump on a door and yell,
‘Hey, there. Lemme out of here. Lemme out
of here.’”

“Yes,” says Mark, eager-like.

“Then Jethro went banging up-stairs and there
was a lot of yelling and banging, and then Jethro
came down again. Since then I’ve heard somebody
moving around up there. Every once in
a while, whoever it is, takes a crack at the door
and yells a little.”

“Um!” says Mark. “T-that’s what Jethro
run into, Plunk. It was a f-feller’s fist, which
is what causes most black eyes. I’ve heard
of folks gittin’ ’em by f-fallin’ out of bed, and by
runnin’ into a d-d-door in the dark, and by
havin’ a bird fly into their face, and by stoopin’
over quick and buttin’ their own knee. I’ve
heard of all those ways, but when you come to
git the f-f-facts, most gen’ally you find out it
was a fist they run into. I f-figgered it was that
way with Jethro, and I guess I kin n-name the
fist.”

“Go on,” says Plunk.

“It b’longed to a f-feller named Pekoe,” says
Mark.

“*Pekoe!*” says Rock.

“That’s the f-feller.”

“He’s the man that brought me here,” says
Rock.

“Jest so,” says Mark.

“What is he back for? And why did Jethro
shut him up?” says Rock.

“That,” says Mark, “is what it’s our b-b-business
to find out.”

“Easy,” says I. “Jest go up to his door and
ask.”

“Sure,” says Plunk. “Jethro’s out in the yard.”

“M-maybe,” says Mark, with a sort of grin,
“we might try.”

We went to the back door and started in, but
just as, we opened the door Jethro came into
the kitchen and looked at us, standing between
us and the door toward the front of the house.

“Better play outdoors to-day,” says he. “I’m
goin’ to clean house, and I don’t want you kids
underfoot.”

So out we went.

“Hum!” says Mark. “Jethro’s out in the
yard. Easy to g-g-git to see this Pekoe. Easy
l-like turnin’ three summersets in the air without
a spring-board.”

“I guess he don’t want us messin’ around,”
says I.

“Didn’t judge he would,” says Mark, “so it
must be there’s s-somethin’ to find out. As soon
as you see a f-f-feller tryin’ to keep somethin’
away from you, why, you want to git to work to
find out what it is. ’Cause, m-m-most gen’ally
it’s somethin’ you’ll be glad to know.”

“What room was he shut up in?” says I.

“Somewhere on the third floor,” says Rock.
“It sounded almost over my head.”

“Where’s your room?” says Mark.

“Other side of the house,” says Rock. “I’ll
show you.”

“Not too s-s-sudden,” says Mark. “We
don’t want to let on to Jethro we’re up to anythin’,
or suspect anythin’. Let’s go to the
other side of the house and p-play around
awhile first.”

So we did. We played tag, which wasn’t
much of a game for Mark Tidd, though he
moved a lot faster than you’d have thought.
But when he ran he looked like it was going to
bust him all to pieces, and the sight of it generally
made you laugh so you couldn’t run yourself.
That kind of evened things up.

After a while Mark says, “N-now, Rock, you
run like the d-dickens, around the other side
of the house, with Binney chasin’ you. Go
over by that l-little grape-arbor where we used
to m-meet you, and then l-lay down like you
was tired out. We’ll come along behind.”

Rock and I tore off, with Plunk and Mark
coming along behind, and all lay down like we
were tired right in front of the arbor.

“Don’t l-look at the house,” says Mark.
“Probably Jethro’s watchin’.”

“There’s your cat,” I says to Mark, pointing
over where his stone cat was.

“Huh!” says he. “N-n-ninety degrees in the
shade. There’s where you quit walkin’ where
she l-looks,” says he. “Right under that tree
there.”

The tree was back toward the rear of the
house, but out quite a ways from it. We all
looked at it.

“I can’t make out,” says Mark, “what the
weather has to do with it. Hot or cold, it
gits me.”

“Ninety degrees in the shade is pretty hot,”
says Plunk.

“Maybe,” says I, “it hain’t got anything to
do with how hot it is. Maybe he wrote it
that way just to fool folks and make it harder
to know what he was tryin’ to tell.”

Mark he looked at me a minute like he was
mad. Then he reached over and banged me on
the back, and says: “Binney, I sh’u’dn’t be
s’prised if you amounted to s-somethin’ some
day. Weather was what Mr. Wigglesworth
wanted f-folks to think of that happened to see
the writin’. So,” says he, “it wasn’t weather
he meant at all. I was a noodle not to think of
that. Um! ... Ninety degrees. What’s
ninety degrees except weather?”

I didn’t think of anything, and nobody else
did, either. We thought quite a while, and
then Mark slapped his fat leg’ and started to
shake all over with one of them still laughs of
his. “Why, you boobs,” says he, “ninety
degrees is m-measurin’! That’s it. You know
a circle? Well, there’s three hunderd and sixty
degrees around one. In ’rithmetic or somethin’
they divide up a circle l-like a clock, only,
instead of havin’ minutes marked off, they
have degrees. Ninety degrees.... Um! ...
That’s a quarter of the way around a circle.
If you walk to the middle of a circle, and
then turn off to the place on the circle that’s
ninety degrees from the place where you first
stepped on the circle, why, it’s a right angle.
See?”

“No,” says I, “my eddication hain’t got
that far.”

He drew it out on the ground, and then it was
as plain as plain could be.

“You walk where the c-c-cat looks,” says he,
excited and stuttering like the mischief. “When
you’ve walked as far as the writin’ says—a
hunderd and t-ten feet, wasn’t it?—you turn
off at a right angle, and there you are.”

“Which way d’you turn?” says I.

That stopped him a minute, but he recited
over Mr. Wigglesworth’s writing: “‘Where
p-pussy looks she walks. Thirty and twenty
and ten and forty-six. N-ninety degrees in
the shade. In. Down. What color is a
b-brick? Investigate. B’lieve what t-tells the
truth.’”

“Yes,” says I.

“What comes after ninety degrees in the
shade?” says he.

“‘In,’” says I.

“In what?” says he.

“I dunno,” says I.

“Well,” says he, “use your b-brains. If you
turn to the left what is there to go in?”

“Nothin’,” says I, looking over that way.

“If you turn to the right, what is there to
g-g-goin?”

“Why,” says I, “the house is that way.”

“Well,” says he, “then I guess you t-turn to
the right, don’t you? If directions tell you to
go in, and there hain’t anythin’ to *go* into, why,
then, you’re turnin’ wrong. Whatever it is
we’re l-lookin’ for is in the house.”

“Looks that way,” says I.

“What doors are on the back of the house?”
says Mark to Rock.

“Kitchen door, and a door that goes down
cellar,” says Rock.

“The cellar d-d-door’s the one,” says Mark,
“because the next word in the writin’ is ‘Down.’
You got to go in and down, which m-m-means
you go in the cellar door and down cellar. We’re
gettin’ it, Rock. I knew we would if we stuck
to it long enough. Now we’ve got to get into
that cellar. Can’t f-f-figger out the rest of that
writin’ till we do.”

“If you say so,” says I, “I guess it must be
so.” Maybe I was a little sarcastic, but he
didn’t pay any attention to me; he was too
interested. That’s the way with him. When he
gets his mind settled down to thinking about a
thing, you could shoot him out of a cannon and
he wouldn’t pay any attention to it. Concentrate
is what Tecumseh Androcles Spat calls it.
He says Mark is one of the greatest concentrators
he ever saw.

Pretty soon he sort of waggled his head as if
he was shaking a fly off his nose, and says,
“Well, we can’t do any m-more about that
to-day. Besides, we’ve got this Pekoe on our
hands. Rock, turn around gradual, like there
wasn’t any reason for it, and tell me how many
windows from the back yours is.”

“It’s the fourth, on the second floor,” says
Rock.

“All right. Now which s-s-side of you did
that noise come from, or was it r-right straight
on top?”

“Sounded like it was almost over my head.
It may have been to one side. I was pretty
excited, you know. Come to think about it,
it might have been a *little* toward the front of
the house.”

Mark got up slow and went into the grape-arbor.
When he got inside we saw him turn
around, back in the shadows where nobody
could see him from the house, and look careful
up toward the windows on the third floor.

He wasn’t gone but a minute. Then he
came waddling out and says: “He’s in a
room with the blinds shut. Fifth window from
the back. Blinds closes t-t-tight. That’s what
makes me think he’s there. Maybe they’re
n-nailed.”

I sneaked a look, and sure enough, the window
he was talking about did have its blinds closed.
That made it hard for anybody inside to see out,
and impossible for anybody outside to see in, or
to make any signals or anything.

“Fine chance,” says I, “of getting at anybody
up there. There ain’t a ladder in town
that’ll reach him.”

“There’s things b-besides ladders,” says Mark.
“Say, Binney, if you was s-shut in a room, and
something came and rapped on your window
like this, *rap-rap-rap*, then *rap-rap-rap*, what
would you think?”

“I’d think somebody was doin’ it to make me
take notice,” says I.

“That’s what this Pekoe would t-t-think,”
says Mark.

“But,” says I, “you can’t reach him. If you
tried it with a long pole Jethro’d catch you
at it.”

“Yes,” says Plunk, “and if you tried it by
throwing stones, he’d catch you at that too.”

“Maybe,” says Mark. “But I got a d-d-dodge
that’ll work, maybe, and Jethro won’t see it,
either. Let’s all git into the arbor where we
can’t be seen.”

We went in and Mark asked if Plunk and I
had our sling-shots. We had, because we always
had them along. You can never tell when you
may need a sling-shot in your business.

“Now,” says Mark, “here’s the notion. We
shoot at Pekoe’s window. I shoot, then Plunk,
then Binney. One, two, three. L-l-like that.
Then stop a m-minute, and do it right over—one,
two, three. See? Jethro won’t be able to
*see that*,” says he.

“Go ahead,” says I, getting a good stone in
the leather, and another in my hand to be ready
for the second volley.

Mark shot, then Plunk, then me. *Pat-pat-pat*,
the three stones sounded. Then we did
it again. *Pat-pat-pat*. After that we waited
with our eyes glued to the window, and our
ears, too. Pretty soon we heard a noise like
glass breaking, and then Pekoe, if it *was* Pekoe,
began pushing and banging at the blinds.

“Hope he don’t make too m-m-much noise,”
says Mark.

It seemed like he couldn’t open the blinds, so
they must have been nailed or fastened somehow,
and they were strong, heavy blinds, but he
could work the shutters up and down so as to
get a better look outside, and we could see his
fingers reaching through. We knew he must
have his eyes right there, looking, so Mark went
to the door of the arbor and stood there quiet.
Pekoe couldn’t miss seeing him any more than
he could miss seeing the new post-office in town
if he was standing right in front of it. That’s
one good thing about being fat—it’s easy for
folks to see you when you want them to. But,
on the other hand, it’s hard to hide from folks
you want to keep away from.

Mark looked at the house careful, but Jethro
wasn’t in sight.

“Rock,” he says, “you and Plunk go to the
kitchen and yell to Jethro that you’re hungry.
If he comes, one of you back over to that kitchen
window there and waggle your hand behind
you.”

Off they went, and pretty soon Plunk showed
up in front of the window and waggled his hand.
So we knew Jethro was in there where he couldn’t
see. Then, quick as a wink, Mark looked up at
the window and waggled *his* hand. The man
inside saw it, because he shoved as much of his
hand through the shutters as he could, and
wiggled it as hard as he could wiggle. Mark
nodded his head.

Plunk was still standing in the kitchen window,
so we knew Jethro was there yet. Mark
gave a look, and then started making letters
with his fingers. You know that sort of deaf
and dumb alphabet that every boy in the
United States can use if he wants to—mostly
behind his geography in school. Well, that’s
what Mark was doing now. He was trying to
talk to Pekoe.

“Is your name Pekoe?” he spelled out as slow
as time. Then he spelled out, “If you can read
what I say wiggle one finger.”

Just one finger came through the blinds and
wiggled.

“Are you a friend of Rock’s? If you are show
two fingers,” Mark signaled.

Two fingers came into sight.

“If you know who he is, and why he’s kept
here, show two fingers again. If you don’t
know, show one finger.”

Just one finger came through.

“I wonder what he’s g-g-got to do with it,
then,” says Mark to me.

And then Plunk and Rock and Jethro all
came around the corner of the house, and Mark
didn’t dare make another move. We didn’t
stay long after that, because we had a lot of
work at the *Trumpet* office, so we went along.
But we promised Rock we’d be back next day,
some of us, and for him to lay low and not to
try monkeying with Pekoe unless he got a good
chance and was sure Jethro wasn’t around.

While we were walking home Mark says,
“P-p-perty good day’s work. Got the worst
part of Mr. Wigglesworth’s writing f-f-figgered
out, and had a l-little chat with Pekoe.”

“There’s some bridges to cross yet,” says I.

“Yes,” says he, “but we’ll cross ’em. You *bet*.”

CHAPTER XVIII
=============

My, how those Home Culturers and Literary
Circlers did work to get subscriptions for
us. I never would have believed it, and how
any of them had time to cook their husbands’
meals, or wash their kids’ faces, I don’t see.
Probably they didn’t, for little things like
keeping house wouldn’t matter when there was
a contest on to see who had the most brains.

Old Grandma Smedley claimed both clubs
didn’t have any brains or they wouldn’t be
fussing with such things. “I calc’late,” says
she, “that I’m the only woman in town that’s
got even common sense. If a woman wants
dumb foolishness in the family she don’t have
to do it herself. Her husband’s always ready.”
But what she said didn’t matter; the contest
went on just the same.

The rules of the contest were that the money
had to be paid right in with a subscription before
it counted, and the first thing Mark and us
fellows knew we had quite some considerable
of a bank account. You get forty-odd women
hustling for subscriptions at a dollar and a
quarter apiece, and it don’t take long to have the
money mount up.

While the subscriptions were coming in we
didn’t forget the advertising, you can bet.
Mark figured out arguments for us to shoot at
the merchants, and they worked pretty good.
Every week we carried more advertising than
we ever had before, just because we had convinced
business men how interested everybody
was in the *Trumpet* just now while the contest
was going on, and how everybody was reading
it. The business men could see that for themselves,
because *they* were reading it, and their
wives were reading it.

“Let’s see,” says Mark, “how much we
*m-might* make a year out of this paper if this
contest b-brought our subscription list up to
f-fifteen hunderd. The subscriptions would
amount to eighteen hunderd and seventy-f-five
dollars. Then our regular advertisin’ that we
could f-figger on here in Wicksville and the
county’ll fetch about seventy-five dollars a
week, or even up to a hunderd, if we’re
real lucky. As soon as we git enough s-subscribers
I’m goin’ after some out-of-town adver-tisin’.
I see a lot of it in good country
p-papers. We’ll git some of that, and our job
work amounts to quite a bit the way it’s been
comin’ in. Looks to me like we ought to make
this p-paper show a profit of, anyhow, two
thousand d-dollars a year, and maybe more.”

“Countin’ chickens before they’re hatched,”
says I.

“We’re hatchin’ ’em fast,” says he.

“Spragg may bust up the nest,” says I,
“and drive off the settin’ hen.”

“Spragg hain’t got real d-dangerous *yet”*
says he, “but we’ll have to pay him some
attention perty quick.”

“Seems like we ought to get somethin’ more
to do to take up our time,” says I. “We hain’t
busy enough. Nothin’ to do but run a contest
that’s close to bein’ a civil war, and git adver-tisin’
and write the news and *git* the news, and
scare up advertisements, and tend to Spragg,
and monkey around with Rock’s mix-up. If,
maybe, we could buy a three-ring circus and be
all the acts, includin’ the menagerie, and then
have school start up to give us somethin’ to do
daytimes, I guess we’d keep from gettin’ lonesome.”

Mark grinned, and says he was going to get
somebody to help Tecumseh Androcles in the
shop, but how that helped *us* I didn’t see.

Well, as I was saying, those women combed
the town and country for subscriptions, until
it got so that anybody who hadn’t subscribed
for the *Trumpet* was as popular as a little girl
coming to school with a box of candy. All you
had to do was to stand in front of the post-office
and mention that you hadn’t subscribed for the
paper yet, and right off you’d be asked by one
woman to go driving with her, and by another
to come to dinner, and by another if you wouldn’t
like a batch of her raised biscuits. I dunno
what a feller could have got out of not having
subscribed yet if he held out long enough, but
I guess most of ’em got their money’s worth.
For when you get a paper for a year, and two or
three invitations to dinner, and buggy rides,
and auto rides, and fresh pies sent over, and all
that sort of thing, why, it would be a mean man
that wasn’t satisfied.

Mark sat down at his desk and started writing
letters. I guess he wrote a dozen and put them
in the envelopes and stamped them.

“Who’s goin’ to git all the mail?” I says.

“Diff’rent folks,” says Mark, the way he
always speaks when he intends to keep something
to himself. “I’m just writin’ around to
git a l-l-little information.”

“Thought you had all there was,” says I.

“Keep cool, Binney,” says he. “Your strong
point hain’t sarcasm. Let’s go out to see
Rock.”

We two went out and we expected maybe Rock
would have something exciting to tell us, but
he didn’t. It seems like nothing at all had
happened. He hadn’t seen a thing of Pekoe,
and hadn’t heard him much.

“Funny,” says Mark, “that you don’t know
anything about this Pekoe, Rock, when it was
him that b-brought you here.”

“Not when you know how I’ve always lived,”
says Rock. “Why, I haven’t seen my father
since I was a baby! I don’t even remember what
he looks like. He wrote me once in a while,
but his letters didn’t tell much. About all there
was in them was that he would come home some
day.”

“You don’t suppose this Pekoe is him, do
you?”

“I *know* he isn’t,” said Rock, as positive as
could be.

“But your father sent him,” says I.

“He didn’t say,” says Rock.

“What made you g-go off with him, then?”

“There wasn’t anything else to do.”

Well, we were stumped right there. It was
a sure thing that this Pekoe knew something we
ought to know, but it looked like he might as
well be in China as where he was, for all the good
it did us. It made Mark Tidd mad.

“We’re goin’ to t-t-talk to Pekoe,” says he,
“and we’re goin’ to do it right off.”

“I’m willin’,” says I, “but I hain’t got any
wings to fly up to his window.”

“And Jethro might not like to see a boy flying
around the yard like a bird, anyhow,” said Rock,
making the first thing that sounded like a joke
that I ever heard him try. It wasn’t much of a
joke when you come to think of it, but it was
encouraging.

“I wish Plunk and Tallow was here,” says
Mark.

“I’ll git ’em,” says I, and off I went, running
as hard as I could. It didn’t take long to grab
onto the fellows and hustle back. When we got
there Mark and Rock had their heads together
like they were making up a scheme.

“Plunk,” says Mark, “you and Tallow are
g-g-goin’ to have a fight. A noisy fight. You
got to slam-bang into each other like all git
out.”

“G’wan!” says Tallow.

“He knows I kin lick him,” says Plunk.

“If Mark Tidd wants any fightin’ done he
kin do it himself,” says Tallow.

Mark didn’t say anything till Tallow was
through spluttering. Then he says: “Jest wait
a m-minute till I tell you about it. I’ve got
to talk to this Pekoe. It hain’t any easy job
to do it, and it won’t be possible if you don’t
help. That’s where the f-f-fight comes in. I
want you to go back by the barn and start a
reg’lar rip-snortin’ rumpus that can be heard
to Jericho. It’ll attract Jethro right out of the
house to see what’s goin’ on. While he’s gone
Binney and I will sneak up-stairs. Rock’ll
keep w-w-watch at the foot of the third-floor
and make a noise to warn us if Jethro’s comin’.
See? You hain’t goin’ to back down on me,
be you?”

“No,” says Tallow, “but I wisht you’d find
somethin’ for me to do where I wouldn’t get
all mussed up. Plunk gets too doggone
int’rested when he goes to fightin’. Seems like
he don’t know the difference between foolin’
and bein’ in earnest.”

“So much the better,” says Mark. “It’ll
look real to Jethro.”

“It’ll look real to Plunk,” says Tallow,
short-like, but Plunk just grinned. He sort
of liked fights.

Tallow and Plunk went off to the other side
of the house like Mark told them. I wished
I could have watched the row, because I’ll bet
it would have been a bully scrap. The way
the fellows looked when we saw them again made
me sure of it. Both of ’em looked as if they’d
been in a boiler explosion that had blown them
into the middle of a cyclone mixed up with an
earthquake. It was just my luck.

Mark and Rock and I waited till we heard
Plunk shout as loud as he could, “You did say
it, too. I heard you. What you mean talkin’
about me like that?”

Tallow yelled right back at him, “I calc’late
I kin say what I want to, and if you don’t like
it you can lump it.”

“I’ve a notion,” says Plunk, “to hit you so
hard your head’ll bust like a bad egg.”

“Hit ahead,” says Tallow. “I dare you to.
You dassent. You couldn’t bust an egg any-how—not
if you *jumped* on it. Looky here.
Here’s a chip on my shoulder. You dassent
knock it off. Jest touch it with your finger,
that’s all. Jest brush it off, if you’re lookin’
to go to the hospital.”

“I’ll knock it off,” says Plunk. “You bet I
will. Have I got to chase you all over the yard
to do it? Huh! Jest gimme one *lick* at you, and
that’ll be all—just one good lick.... There
goes your old chip.”

*Spang!* Tallow swatted at him, and in a
second they were at it. Usually when a fellow
gets to fighting in earnest he’s too busy with
his fists to have much time for hollering, but
the way Tallow and Plunk yelled and dared each
other was a caution. I don’t see how they
managed it.

“Good kids,” says Mark. “L-l-listen to ’em.
That ought to fetch Jethro.”

It did. In a minute out came Jethro to see
what the racket was about, and as soon as he
came, the three of us slid in the side door. You
bet we were pretty spry about it. Rock knew
the way, and he hustled some. We stuck right
to his heels. We almost jumped to the top of
the first flight of stairs, and would have jumped
the next but our wind was getting short. Rock
stopped at the bottom of that flight.

“Cough,” says Mark, “if Jethro comes this
way.”

“All right,” panted Rock, and up we went.

All the doors on that floor were shut, but we
knew Pekoe’s door must be on the left side of
the hall and three or four doors from the back
of the house. Mark tried the fourth door,
rapping on it three times soft, and then three
times again.

“Who’s there?” says a voice.

“Are you Mr. Pekoe?” says Mark.

“Yes. Who are you?”

“Friends of Rock’s. We haven’t much time.
Got Jethro out of the w-w-way for a minute
and sneaked up. We’re helpin’ Rock. There’s
some kind of a mystery about him, and we’re
solvin’ it. We got to know what *you* know.”

“Don’t go too fast, young feller,” says Pekoe.
“I don’t know you yet, and I hain’t talkin’ to
anybody that inquires. Maybe you was sent
by the feller that shut me up here.”

“We weren’t. Rock’s with us. He’s standin’
at the f-f-foot of the stairs, watchin’. It was us
that s-s-shot at your window yesterday, and it
was me that t-t-talked deaf and dumb with
you.”

“Oh,” says Pekoe. “What do you want to
know? Why don’t you let me out first?”

“We can’t,” says Mark. “Why don’t you
get out?”

“I’m no sparrow,” says Pekoe. “It’s three
stories down and them blinds is nailed. I can’t
bust open the door. That Jethro didn’t leave
a thing in the room I could use to bust it down.
There hain’t a chair or a bed in here. Nothin’
but a mattress and some quilts. What kin a
feller do with them?”

“Not much,” says Mark. “And we can’t do
anythin’ now. But we’ll git you out. Rock’s
the m-m-main consideration now. You f-fetched
him here?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I got a letter from his father tellin’ me to git
him at the school he was at and fetch him
here.”

“Why?”

“’Cause his father was down with some kind of
sickness in Central America and figgered he was
goin’ to die. The letter was two months old
when I got it. It jest said he was goin’ to die,
and to get his son and take him to Henry
Wigglesworth in Wicksville.”

“What made his father send you?” Mark
says.

“Because him and me was pals in lots of
places, and because he knew he could trust me
to do what he asked. We been in a lot of
pinches together.”

“Why was you to t-t-take Rock to Mr.
Wigglesworth?”

“I dunno. Big Rock never told me.”

“Is Rock’s father’s n-n-name Rock, too?”

“Yes.”

“What else?”

“Rock Armitage,” says Pekoe.

“Huh!” says Mark in a sort of disappointed
tone. Then in a second he says: “What made
you come back again? And how did the Man
With the Black Gloves know you was comin’ so
as to l-l-lay for you?”

“I come back because—”

Just then Rock began to cough like the
mischief, and we dassent stop, but rushed right
to the stairs. Rock looked up and motioned us
back, and we could hear Jethro coming up the
stairs from the ground floor. Rock hadn’t
signaled us quick enough so we could get down,
and there we were, caught on the top floor of
that house without any chance I could see but
what we’d be caught by Jethro, and then there’d
be a fine mess of fish.

But Mark he never stopped to think. He just
grabbed my arm and hauled me back along the
hall. We stopped back from the stairs and
heard Jethro ask Rock what he was doing there,
and Rock said he was just going to his room for
something. And then Jethro started up to the
third floor.

Well, if he got to the top of those stairs he’d
see us, for there wasn’t anything to hide us.
Mark reached out quick and tried a door. It
wasn’t locked, thank goodness, and he jerked it
open and in we popped. It was a stairway
leading up to the attic or something, and you’d
better believe we went up some fast and considerable
quiet.

“Huh!” I whispered when we were up there.
“We’re in a lovely boat now. Four stories
up.”

“I dunno,” says Mark. “It might be worse.”

“Yes,” says I, “we might be up *eight* stories.”

“Anyhow,” says he, “we’re in the h-h-house.”

“Yes,” says I, “and like to stay in it.”

CHAPTER XIX
===========

We found out we were in a big attic that
covered the whole of the house. Part
of it was floored over and part of it was just
joists with the lath and plaster showing on the
under side. It looked as if there was about an
acre in it, and it was full of angles and brick
chimneys and little, funny-shaped windows, and
rubbish, and trunks and goodness knows what—except
things to eat.

We were there, and no chance of getting out
right away, so the idea of getting something to
eat was one that came pretty quick. It went
about as soon as it came.

“Guess we’ll have to gnaw air,” says I, kind
of down-hearted.

“L-l-lucky,” says Mark, “if Jethro don’t
gnaw us.”

“What’ll Plunk and Tallow do when we
don’t show up?”

“Nothin’, I hope,” says Mark. “Rock’ll
f-find some way to tell ’em we’re penned up
here, and I guess they’ll have sense enough to do
n-nothin’ but hang around to see what t-turns up.”

“They’ll hang around,” says I. “You couldn’t
drive ’em away. Don’t think they’d sneak off
and leave us, do you?”

“Not them,” says Mark, and the way he said
it would have sounded pretty good to Tallow
and Plunk if they had heard. It showed that
Mark *knew* them, and was sure he could depend
on them no matter what happened.

“L-let’s rummage around,” says Mark.

We stirred things up good, because Mark said
you never could tell what you were going to find
in an attic, and if there was anything there to
throw any light on Rock’s affairs, why, we
wanted to know it. There were trunks and
boxes of old clothes, and busted chairs, and piles
of old magazines and books, and hats, and shoes.
You could find ’most anything you didn’t want
there, but not much you did want, unless you was
figuring on dressing up for a masquerade.

Over in a corner, though, I found a little
rocking-chair for a baby, and what was left of a
doll’s house and some busted toys.

“Look here,” says I. “I wonder what Mr.
Wigglesworth was doin’ with these kid things.
Didn’t have any that I ever heard of.”

“No,” says Mark, but his eyes began to shine
like everything. “Not that we heard of. Maybe,
Binney, there’s n-n-nothin’ to this, but maybe
it’s the m-most important thing we’ve run onto
in this whole business.”

“How?” says I.

“B-because,” says he, “it makes it l-look as
if what I was hopin’ was so might be so.”

“Um!” says I. “How int’restin’.”

Well, we kept on digging into things, and
after a while Mark hauled out one of those
old-fashioned photograph-albums that fasten
with a brass catch in front. It wasn’t a big
plush one, like we got to home on the center-table,
but a little leather one about six inches
long and four wide and two thick. We went
over by a window and looked through it. My!
but it was comical—the clothes folks used to
wear, and the faces they wore when they went
to have their pictures taken!

We looked at every picture careful. Along
at the front we recognized Mr. Wigglesworth
when he was a young man, with Burnside
whiskers and funny pants, and his hair all
plastered down in front and combed up on the
side. After a few pages was another picture of
a young woman sitting on a rock with Mr.
Wigglesworth standing behind her with his hand
on her shoulder.

“Look at that!” says Mark, excited as a bantam
rooster. “He was married. See? B-b-bet
that p-picture was taken on their weddin’ trip.
It’s a weddin’-trip-lookin’ picture,” says he.

“Yes,” says I, “it sure looks foolish.”

“Hum!” says he. “This is important.”

“Good,” says I.

But the next picture—that was what startled
both of us, for—maybe you won’t believe it—but
it was the Man With the Black Gloves, only
about twenty years younger than he is, and not
wearing the gloves, but just as mean and ornery-looking
then as he is now.

“There,” says Mark, “I g-guess when we
leave here we t-take this album along.”

“Why?” says I.

“All those p-pictures,” says he, “has the
names of the photographers on ’em, and the
p-places where they was taken. We can go
there or write there, and t-trace back somethin’
about Mr. Wigglesworth’s family.”

But we hadn’t seen all the album yet. There
was, farther on, a picture of Mrs. Wigglesworth
(at least we guessed it must be Mrs. Wigglesworth)
with a baby on her lap, and Mark was
like to jump out of his skin.

“I knew it m-must be,” says he. “We’re
gettin’ hot,” says he.

After that came a lot of pictures of a kid—a
girl, and she kept getting older and older, until
the last one showed she was maybe eighteen or
nineteen, somewheres around there—about as
old as a school-teacher, maybe. And then there
wasn’t any more of her, and there wasn’t any
more of Mrs. Wigglesworth, either.

But Mark was satisfied. “Look at that last
p-picture,” says he. “Who d-does it resemble?”

“Nobody I kin see,” says I.

“All right,” says he; “jest wait.”

“I hain’t got anythin’ else to do,” says I, “so
I might ’s well.”

He stepped back and almost went off of the
floor and stepped on the lath and plaster between
the joists.

“Lookout!” says I. “You’ll go right through.”

He slapped his knee. “Right t-through!”
says he. “Ain’t we fat-heads? Say, Pekoe’s
room’s over about there, hain’t it?” says he,
pointing across the attic.

“Somewheres,” says I.

“Anyhow,” says he, “we hain’t been wastin’
time.”

He went to the back of the house and paced
off toward the front.

“I calc’late Pekoe’s room is about under here,”
says he, and got down on his knees and began
working cautious at the plaster between two
laths with his knife. He picked and picked, and
at last got a hole through about as big around as
a lead-pencil, then he got down on his stummick
and looked through it.

“Mr. Pekoe,” says he.

“What?” says Pekoe’s voice, kind of muffled-like.

“We’re h-here,” says Mark, “up in the attic.
Jethro’s got us cornered, but he don’t know it.”

“That’s where you’re ahead of me,” says
he; “Jethro’s got me cornered and he *does*
know it.”

“Tell me all you know about Rock and his
f-f-father,” says Mark.

“Don’t know much about Rock,” says Pekoe,
“except that his father always kept him in
school, and sometimes had pretty hard work to
find the money to pay for it. Mostly Big Rock
was in South America or Alaska or Burma or
Africa or somewheres, trying to find a gold
mine or a diamond mine, or somethin’. He
never got to the United States at all. He wasn’t
a feller that talked much, but when it came to
*acting* well, you can bet he was right there.
There never was a squarer pal than Big Rock,
and there’s men that loves him from Nome to
Cape Town.”

“Where was Rock’s m-m-mother?”

“Big Rock never mentioned her, but I knew
she was dead. Been dead since Rock was a little
baby. Guess that’s why Big Rock went to
globe-trottin’.”

“You don’t know her name?”

“Never heard it.”

“And Big Rock’s d-dead now?”

“Not by a jugful,” says Pekoe. “I thought
he was, and he thought he was goin’ to be, but
I got a letter from him a week ago, and he says
he got over that sickness, and for me not to take
Rock to Wicksville if I hadn’t, and if I had, to git
him back again, because he didn’t want the boy
to go there while he was alive. He says he
didn’t want to be beholdin’ to a man while there
was a chance of keepin’ away from it. The way
he wrote made me think he had some sort of a
grudge ag’in’ this Mr. Wigglesworth.”

“And that’s all you know?”

“Every livin’ thing,” says he.

“All right,” says Mark. “Now we won’t
t-talk any more, ’cause Jethro might hear.
We’re g-goin’ to git away, and we’ll git you
away as soon as we kin. I guess things is
g-goin’ to happen around here perty sudden.”

“Hope so,” says Pekoe. “They would happen
sudden if Big Rock was to show up.”

“Good-by,” says Mark, “till we see you
again.”

“Now,” says I, “let’s figger on how we’re goin’
to escape from the dungeon.”

“’Tain’t a d-dungeon,” says Mark. “We’re
shut up in the tower of the Knight we’ve been
f-fightin’. There’s men-at-arms crowdin’ all
around, and the drawb-bridge is up and the
moat’s full of water. I guess he’s holdin’ us for
ransom.”

“If I don’t git somethin’ to eat perty soon,”
says I, “he won’t have anythin’ *to* ransom.”

“Food,” says Mark, “hain’t to be thought
about in sich circ’mstances. Here we be shut
in the same t-tower with the young Duke that
we’re liegemen of, and his father’s retainer, the
Knight Pekoe. What’s food compared with
sich things?”

“Even a Duke,” says I, “wouldn’t be much
good if he didn’t eat for a week or two. I guess
they’d be lookin’ for a new Duke to take his
job.”

“The b-best of it,” says Mark, “is that the
Duke’s secret is hid in this Castle Wigglesworth.
If we could git it we could rescue the Duke and
the Knight would wish he hadn’t ever been
born.”

“You hain’t figgerin’ on tryin’ to follow up
that paper thingumbob of Mr. Wigglesworth’s,
be you?”

“We’re inside the castle,” says Mark, “and
the enemy don’t know it. Never have a b-better
chance to snoop around, if we wait till after
dark.”

“Without nothin’ to eat,” says I.

He jest sniffed.

“And,” says I, “with the risk of this Knight
Jethro findin’ us snoopin’.”

“You hain’t s-s-scairt, be you?” says he.

“I hain’t what you’d call easy in my mind,”
says I.

“All right,” says he. “If that’s the way you
f-f-feel, we’ll jest escape, and I’ll git Plunk or
Tallow to come back with me when we can git
a chanct.”

“You won’t,” says I, “because so long as
I’m here I might as well stick. If them kids
can do it, I guess I can.”

“I knew you would, Binney,” says he, which
ended that. I was elected to stay, hungry or
no hungry, so I settled down and made believe
I was eating an apple pie. But that didn’t do
much good. It just made me hungrier.

“Wish we could c-c-communicate with our
faithful friends, the Knights Tallow and Plunk,”
says he.

“We can try,” says I.

“There’s a ladder l-leadin’ to a trap door in
the roof,” says Mark. “Let’s go up it and see
what there is to see.”

The ladder went up over in a front corner,
and I scrambled up it first. Mark came right
behind me. I unhooked the trap door cautious
and shoved it up; then I poked my head through.
There was a flat place about six feet square with
a railing around it, and I knew we were on top
of a sort of little tower on the front of the
house.

“Come on,” says I, “but keep down. We can
hide behind this railin’ here.”

“’Tain’t a railin’,” says Mark, “it’s a
battlement.”

That’s the way with him. When he’s playing
a thing he *plays* it, and sticks to details.
Everything you say or do has got to be the way it
would be if what you was doing was real instead
of make-believe. He was the greatest make-believer
I ever saw.

We crawled out on the roof, and looked around
pretty careful, I can tell you. Nobody was in
sight for a while. Then we saw Rock in the
yard, and after a while we saw Plunk and Tallow
coming toward him. They stopped and talked
with their heads close together.

“Our t-trusty friends,” says Mark, “have
found a way of t-talkin’ to the young Duke.”

“Yes,” says I, “they’re doin’ it the usual
way—with their mouths.”

“We got to let them know we’re h-h-here,”
says he.

“Yell at ’em,” says I.

He just looked at me, and then got his slingshot
out of his pocket and put a pebble in the
leather. Then his eyes sort of twinkled, and
he says, “If I hit where I aim, Plunk Smalley’s
g-g-goin’ to git a s’prise.”

Plunk’s back was toward us, so I sort of
guessed.

Mark aimed careful and let her fly. In a
jiffy Plunk clapped his hand to the seat of his
pants and let out a holler you could have heard
in Illinoy. Then him and the others looked all
around and Mark stuck up his head pretty slow,
and then his hand, and waggled it.

Plunk and Tallow and Rock saw it, but they
had sense enough not to waggle back. They
knew Jethro might see them. So they just
nodded their heads and made believe they was
looking at something else.

“Now,” says Mark, “we’ll give ’em their
orders.”

“How?” says I.

“Write ’em,” says he, “and chuck ’em over.”
He got out his pencil and wrote a note that
said:

:sc:`Faithful Knights`:—The Knight Binney and me is
safe. Our presence hain’t known, and we got to talk with
the prisoner Pekoe. In the tower where we’re hid we
found other secrets that is important to the young Duke.
Tell him his father’s alive, and is a great man, so the
prisoner Pekoe says. We hain’t going to escape till we
see if we can get past the men-at-arms and the bad Knight
Jethro, and hunt around in the dungeons under this castle
to find out what the writing left by the Earl Wigglesworth
leads to. You faithful knights stick around till you hear
from us, but don’t be seen. If we don’t show up by midnight,
you better wake up Lawyer Jones and tell him what
has happened, and for him to come out with his men-at-arms
to rescue us. If you hear three whistles inside go
and bang like everything on the front door and holler
fire. All in the young Duke’s service,

:sc:`Mark Tidd, Knight`

Then he folded it and, making sure Jethro
wasn’t watching, let it flutter over the edge. It
fell to the grass quite a ways off and pretty soon
we saw the knights and the young Duke go over
to it, and Tallow put his foot on it. After a
while he sat down, and we saw him stuff it in
his pocket. Then they all went over to the
arbor and out of sight. We knew they were
reading the note, and that they would stick
just like Mark told them.

CHAPTER XX
==========

About all we could do now until Jethro was
safe in bed was to sit around and wish he’d
go early. If I was going to pick out the worst
job in the world, it would be a waiting job.
I don’t know why it is, but when you’re waiting
time goes along about a dozen times as slow as
it does any other time. If it hadn’t been for
Mark Tidd and his make-believes I guess I’d
have gone plumb crazy.

“Say,” says I, after a while, “I know there’s
some sort of a mystery about Rock, but what
d’you s’pect it is? From them photographs
you was so glad to find I guessed maybe you
figgered he was Mr. Wigglesworth’s son.”

“Shucks!” says he. “And you mustn’t speak
about the young Duke as Rock. ’Tain’t respectful.
Earl Wigglesworth’s son! Shucks!
Anybody could see that b-baby in the photographs
was a girl. Besides, didn’t this p-prisoner
Pekoe say he was a son of the man called the
Big Duke, that’s off huntin’ for the Holy Grail
or s-s-somethin’ in far countries?”

“Sure,” says I, “so he did.”

We didn’t say anything for a spell, and then
I asked: “If the young Duke hain’t a son of
Earl Wigglesworth’s, why was he fetched here?
What int’rest did the Earl Wigglesworth have
in him, anyhow?”

“That,” says Mark, “is exactly what we got
to f-f-find out. Hain’t you s-satisfied with
havin’ a dandy mystery? Want to spoil it by
s-s-solvin’ it without any trouble? What good’s
a m-m-mystery unless it’s mysterious?” says he.

That did sound reasonable.

“S’posin’,” says Mark, “that the young Duke
wasn’t jest the Duke, but was entitled to be
somethin’ more. Maybe king or some job like
that. And s’posin’, while his father, the Big
Duke, was off c-c-chasin’ this Holy Grail, that
enemies s-stole him away, and there wasn’t
any way to p-prove he was the rightful king.
See? And s’posin’ this Earl Wigglesworth he
had somethin’ to prove it by, but didn’t dare to
b-burn it up or any thin’. And when he come to
die he r-r-repented his bad deeds. And then
he wrote that p-p-paper showin’ where the
p-papers to prove the Duke was entitled to be
king was hid. That’s how I f-f-figger it. Now,
we faithful retainers of the Duke has got to
r-recover them papers and fix it so’s the Duke
comes into what’s rightfully hisn. Hain’t that
about it?”

“Shouldn’t be s’prised,” says I. “But seems
to me like the Big Duke was mighty careless to
go off chasin’ that Grail, whatever *that* is, and
leave his son layin’ around loose for anybody to
steal.”

“These here chivalrous knights,” says Mark,
“was always doin’ them foolish things. If they
hadn’t,” says he, “there wouldn’t have been any
s-s-stories. Seems l-like every knight was a
l-little crazy. All I ever read about did things
that was so silly you’d lick a p-puppy for not
knowin’ better than they did.”

“What’s this Grail you was talkin’ about?”

“It’s a cup,” says Mark, “and I guess it’s
a magic cup or somethin’, near’s I kin judge.
It’s got a way of wanderin’ around all by itself
and hidin’ away. Feller named Galahad up and
f-found it once. His dad’s name was Launcelot,
and he was the biggest knight that ever was.”

“What did this Galy-had do with it?” says I.

“Oh,” says Mark, “I calc’late he just
*f-found* it—and let it go at t-t-that. Just like
a knight. Spend a year l-lookin’ for a thing,
and when he f-finds it, instead of takin’ it home
to put on the what-not and show to folks, he
jest says, ‘I spy,’ and gallops off again.”

“Looks silly,” says I.

“Was s-silly,” says he.

“Say,” says I, after thinking the thing over a
while, “it just come into my head that us fellers
was pokin’ our heads into somethin’ that didn’t
concern us. What we monkeyin’ with this
mystery for, anyhow?”

“Binney,” says Mark, “you s’prise me.
Hain’t we newspaper men? Well! Hain’t it
the b-business of newspaper men to git the
news?”

“You bet,” says I.

“And won’t the answer to this m-mystery be
the b-biggest news ever p-printed in a Wicksville
paper?”

“Guess so,” says I.

“That’s why we’re after it,” says he. “Besides,”
he says, “the young Duke’s in t-trouble,
and a feller that won’t help another feller out
when he’s in t-trouble hain’t much good.”

Well, *that* was so.

Pretty soon it commenced to get dark, and
from then the time went slower and slower.
Neither of us had a watch, so we couldn’t tell
what time it was, and we decided to go up on
top of the tower to listen if we could hear the
town clock in Wicksville. We kept on listening
a long time, and then it struck. Eight o’clock,
it said, and I would have been willing to bet a
minute before that it was ten at least.

“If you wait l-l-long enough,” says Mark,
with a grin, “any l-length of time passes by.”

I hadn’t ever thought of that before, but you
could see right off that it was so. Mark was
always discovering new things.

That’s how it happened now. We kept on
waiting, and after a couple of years the town
clock struck ten. Then we waited what we
judged was a half an hour.

“Jethro ought to be in b-bed now,” says
Mark.

“If he’s ever goin’,” says I.

“T-take off your shoes,” says Mark, which
we both did, and crept down the attic stairs as
quiet as a couple of cats. We opened the door
into the second-floor hall pretty cautious, and
listened. There wasn’t a sound. Then we
sneaked along the hall to the top of the stairs,
and still we didn’t hear a thing. I kept wishing
we could hear a good, snorting snore, and then
we’d be sure Jethro was out of the way.

After a minute we went down the first-floor
stairs, and was just at the bottom and turning
toward the back of the house when the
front-door bell rang. I ’most jumped out of my skin.
We stood stalk still a second, and then we heard
a sound in a room at the left like somebody
getting up out of a chair.

“Quick!” says Mark, and he grabbed me by
the arm and pulled me into a little sort of cubbyhole
under the stairs.

And then out came Jethro, as big as life and
natural enough to scare the life out of me. He
marched right past us so close we could have
touched him, and went to the door.

Well, sir, when we heard the man’s voice that
he let in you could have bought *me* for a peanut
shuck. It was the Man With the Black Gloves.
Mark pinched my arm.

Right then I says to myself that being a newspaper
man was all right—if you kept on being
one all in a healthy piece—but as for me, I’d
rather be something else and safe in bed.

Jethro and the Man With the Black Gloves
went right past us and into the library, where
they lighted the lamp and left the doors open.
The light shone right out into the hall, and they
sat down facing the door, looking right out in
our direction. We couldn’t have moved out of
that cubby-hole an inch without being seen.
It was a dandy place to be, I don’t think!

The worst of it was they talked low so we
couldn’t hear a word they said, until at last the
Man With the Black Gloves sort of raised his
voice, angry-like, and says:

“We got to get that kid out of here. Right
away.”

That was all we heard, but Mark laid his
fingers on my hand and pressed. I knew what
he meant all right. What he meant was it was
lucky we heard *that*, and we’d have to get awful
busy awful quick.

After a while we made out another thing he
said, which was, “The kid’s father’s dead.
Central America. Months ago. No danger
from him.”

Well, we had later news about Big Rock than
that. Then Jethro says: “This Pekoe don’t
know anythin’. There’s nothin’ he can tell
the boy.”

“But he can snoop around and get suspicious,”
says the Man With the Black Gloves, “and he’s
no man to fool with—not if he’s been a partner
of Big Rock Armitage.”

“He wasn’t sich a tough proposition to
handle,” says Jethro. “I done it alone.”

“Huh!” says the Man.

“We might go and see what we kin git out
of him,” says Jethro.

“All right,” says the Man, and up they got
and went tramping up the stairs right over our
heads.

“N-n-now,” whispered Mark, and out he
ducked and headed for the back of the house.
I was right on his heels, you can bet, and if the
hall had been wide enough I’ll bet I’d have beat
him. I was anxious enough to get somewheres
else than where I was. Any change looked like a
big improvement to me.

We got into the kitchen, and because we
didn’t know the house very well inside, which
Mark said was our fault and we ought to suffer
for it, we had to prowl around a lot to find the
cellar door. That took some time, because it
was dark and we dassent make a light, and there
were a dozen doors out of that big kitchen, and
we had to open every one; we opened slow and
cautious so it wouldn’t squeak or anything.

At last we found steps going down. It was as
black down there as a lump of charcoal, darker
even than it was in the kitchen. But we had
to go it blind. One step, two steps, we went,
and then Mark Tidd says something startled-like,
and all at once I heard the loudest, clangiest,
bangiest kind of a noise and then another.
Right in front of us! I like to have jumped
clean out of my stockings.

*Bang! Bang-bang! Clangety-dang-whang-bang!*
something went, rolling and bumping downstairs
ahead of us.

“What’s that?” says I.

“It l-l-looks,” says Mark, “like our f-finish.”
That was him all over. He could joke even
when we were in a fix like that, and keep as cool
as if nothing had happened at all.

“Did you kick somethin’ over?” says I.

“Oh no,” says he. “It j-just went for an
evenin’ stroll all by itself. Calc’late it was the
sheet-iron wash-tub settin’ here g-gossipin’ with
the boiler,” says he.

“And Jethro’ll be here in a second gossipin’
with us,” says I.

We lighted a match then. It was time to
hustle about as fast as we could hustle, and you
can’t do that when it’s so dark you can’t pinch
your own nose and feel it, even if you could
find your nose to pinch.

When the light flared up we found we were
half-way down the stairs, and that the stairs
went between two brick walls and didn’t go
right into the big cellar, but into a kind of little
hall, and that there was a door about six feet
from the bottom step. That led into the cellar.

We scooted for the door.

“G-good heavy door,” says Mark. “Slam her
s-shut.”

I did, not worrying much about noise now,
and then we both lighted matches to see what
chances was standing around offering themselves
to a couple of boys who wished they was off in
Africa or at the North Pole instead of in Mr.
Wigglesworth’s cellar.

The room we were in was a big one, the whole
width of the house. Toward the front of the house
was a brick wall, with doors in it that led to other
parts of the cellar. The door we came through
was the only one into the room from the back.

“B-b-barricade the door,” says Mark, and we
set to work piling things against it. There were
quite a few heavy things there, which was our
first piece of luck that night, and the way we
pulled and hauled and jerked them in front of
that door would have done your heart good. In
three minutes it would have taken an elephant
to push it open.

“There,” says Mark, “n-now we got to see if
there’s another stairway down here.”

We scurried into the other parts of the cellar,
but there wasn’t another stairs. Anybody that
got us now would have to come the way we did,
or through a window, and the cellar windows
were little, narrow ones that neither Jethro nor
the Man With the Black Gloves could have got
through to save their lives.

We were safe for a while, anyhow.

“Here’s a lamp,” says I; “let’s light her up.
Somehow I feel easier in my mind when it hain’t
pitch dark.”

“Go ahead,” says Mark, so I lighted up, and
just then somebody came pounding down the
stairs and stumbled over the tin things that had
given us away, and banged against the door.

Of course the door wouldn’t open.

“Somebody in here,” yelled Jethro. “They
got the door fastened.”

“Bust it,” says the Man With the Black
Gloves.

Jethro tried that, but we didn’t worry much,
knowing what was against it.

“Can’t budge it,” says he.

There wasn’t a sound for a minute. Then the
Man called out:

“Hey, inside there! Who are you and what
d’you want?”

Mark pinched my arm and motioned to keep
still.

“Come out of there,” says Jethro, and I felt
like giggling. Not that I wasn’t afraid. Whee!
I should say I was afraid. The chills that was
running up and down my back was enough to
freeze my spine into an icicle.

“They can’t g-get at us,” says Mark. “Let’s
use what t-time we got to see if we can trace out
the rest of Mr. Wigglesworth’s writin’. The
last part of it says, ‘In. Down.’ We’re *that*
all right. Then it says, ‘What color is a brick?
Investigate.’ That comes next. What color
*is* a brick, Binney?”

“Brick color,” says I.

“No?” says he. “G’wan! I thought it was
the color of a orange blossom.”

“Red, then,” says I. “Most of ’em is.”

“This cellar’s b-built of red brick,” says he.

“Sure,” says I.

“Then,” says he, “it’s safe to s-s-say this
s-secret’s got somethin’ to do with these bricks
here.”

“Yes,” says I.

“Git the lamp,” says he, which I did. We felt
all over for loose bricks and things like that.
Sort of figgered we’d find a hiding-place somewheres,
but we didn’t, and all the time Jethro
and the Man were doing their best to get the
door open.

“Hustle,” says I.

“What’s the use?” says he. “We can’t git
out any more ’n they kin git in.”

Pretty soon Mark says, “Color’s got some-thin’
to do with it, too. Bricks and color,”
says he.

He grabbed the lamp and went all around the
room. All at once he stopped and called soft to
me. “Binney!”

“Yes,” says I.

“Look,” says he.

I looked where he was pointing, and up toward
the top of the wall was a brick that wasn’t
brick color! It was a pale-complected brick—almost
white.

“What color is a brick?” says Mark, and
heaved a big sigh of relief.

“Kin you reach it?” says I.

“No,” says he. “Here, step on my back.”

He stooped over, and I stepped where he told
me. It was like standing on a platform to
speak a piece, his back was so broad. I thought
a little of the feller in the *Arabian Nights* that
got off on an island and built a fire, and then
the island dived, because it was a whale. Only
Mark didn’t dive.

I reached up and fumbled with the brick. It
was wedged pretty tight, but it wasn’t plastered.
I got a holt of the edge with my nails and
wiggled and monkeyed with it, till it came out,
and then I shoved my arm back into the hole that
was left—and my fingers touched something
that felt like a big envelope full of something.
I hauled it out and jumped down.

“There,” says I, “we got somethin’, but
much good it’s likely to do us.”

Mark was almost jumping up and down he
was so tickled. He held the envelope up to
the light, and read on it, “Take this envelope
to Lawyer Jones or some other trustworthy
lawyer.”

“Jest what I’d ’a’ done, anyhow,” says he.

Then he stuffed the paper inside of his shirt,
and stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled
three times. When Jethro and the Man heard
that they stopped working at the door, but
when nothing else happened they went at it
again.

We waited, too. Quite a while went past, and
the only thing we heard was Jethro and the
Man.

“Can’t be Plunk and Tallow has deserted us,”
says I.

“N-n-never,” says Mark—and just then we
heard an awful kicking and pounding on the
front door, and jangling of the bell in the
kitchen, and the fellers’ voices hollering, “Fire!
Fire! Fire!” as tight as they could.

“Good kids,” says Mark. “Git ready,
Binney.” Ready was somethin’ I’d been for
several hours.

CHAPTER XXI
===========

We heard Jethro and the Man With the
Black Gloves dash up-stairs, and they
hadn’t hit the top step before Mark and I began
clearing away the door so we could get out. It
didn’t take us long, you bet, and it didn’t take
us long to open the outside door and get out into
the yard.

“A-arbor,” says Mark, and we made for that
as tight as we could go. Plunk and Tallow had
quit hollerin’ fire, and in a minute along they
plunged and came right in on top of us.

“Where’s Rock?” says Mark. “See him?”

“No.”

“We’re s-safe,” says he. “Let’s see if we
can’t rescue the young Duke. I guess he’s goin’
to need rescuin’ perty quick.”

“There’s a light in his room,” says I.

“Let him know we’re here,” says Mark, and
I whanged a stone out of my sling-shot right
through the open window. Rock stuck his head
out.

“I’m goin’ to sneak over in the shadow,” says
I, “and tell him to come down.”

Off I went, not waiting for anybody to say
anything, and got to the house all right. There
was plenty of bushes and things to hide behind,
and when I got there I called Rock, cautious.

“Yes,” says he.

“Come and git rescued,” says I.

“Mark and Binney got out safely?” says he.

“You bet,” says I, but I didn’t mention the
papers we found behind the white brick.

“I never could get past Jethro down the
stairs,” says he.

“Stairs,” says I, “was made for folks to walk
up and down on—not for folks to escape on.
What would be the fun of escapin’ jest by walkin’
down a flight of steps? Any adventure in that?
Why,” says I, “Mark Tidd would be disgusted
if you escaped that way!”

“What’ll I do, then?” says he.

“Jump,” says I.

“I need all my arms and legs,” says he.

Just then something dropped on me, and I
heard Jethro growl like a bear that he had me.
He needn’t ’a’ told me; I knew it. Of course I
did what I could to get away, and threw myself
back and squirmed and kicked and thrashed.
But he hung on. I was on the ground and he
was leaning over me. All at once I heard a
thump and a big grunt out of Jethro, and he
let go of me and keeled over, making funny,
snuffling noises, like his wind was knocked out.
Which it was, for Rock had seen what was going
on, and he’d hung by his hands from the window-sill
and dropped kerslam right onto the back
of Jethro’s neck.

He grabbed me by the arm and dragged me
up.

“Run!” says he, and we ran. I rather guess
we ran. Before Jethro got his breath back
we had a good start, and in the dark it was
enough. He came plunging and yelling after
us, but we took to the shadows and dodged
and wriggled through the hedge and made up
the road. He didn’t have any more chance
to catch us than an angle-worm has to catch a
rabbit.

When we knew we had him beaten good we
stopped and hid alongside of the road to wait
for Tallow and Plunk and Mark. It was quite
a while before they came along, and then they
didn’t come by the road, but back through the
fields and wood-lots. I then whistled out a
signal whistle. Mark answered it, so I knew
it was our fellows, and in a minute we got
together.

“N-now for home,” says Mark. “I’ll take
Rock to the house. You f-fellers keep quiet
about everythin’ that’s happened. I’ll give out
to-morrow that Rock’s a f-friend come to visit
me.”

That’s how it was. Mark stopped on his
way home, late as it was, to pound on Lawyer
Jones’s door. Lawyer Jones was pretty mad
when he woke up, and said some pretty descriptive
things to Mark, but when Mark told him
what was up he quieted right down, and him
and Mark went inside for a few minutes. Then
we all went home.

Next day Mark and Rock and I went to
Lawyer Jones’s and we all read that paper.
Rock’s eyes nearly popped out of his head, but
Mark says he knew it all the while.

“Now, Lawyer Jones,” says he, “it was the
*Trumpet* that f-found this paper and got it.
So the *Trumpet’s* entitled to something hain’t
it?”

“You bet,” says Rock. “Whatever you
want from we.”

“All I want,” says he, “is to have this kept
quiet till after the paper comes out d-day after
to-morrow. That’ll be the end of the contest,
too, and the dinners and everything. And we
can print this whole thing, and almost knock
the eyes out of folks with what’s been goin’ on
right under their eyes, and them never knowin’
it!”

“I guess,” says Lawyer Jones, “that you’re
entitled to that much.”

And so the mystery kept on being a mystery
for a couple more days.

Mark got a lot of mail that day and spent
most of the morning opening it and studying it.
He didn’t let on what he was up to and we knew
better than to ask. Then he went out, and him
and Tecumseh Androcles Spat talked and talked
and figured. After that Mark came in and
wrote all the afternoon, and then most of the
evening, and as fast as he wrote Tecumseh and
the young man we’d got to help him set up in
type what Mark had written. Part of what he
was doing was writing the story about Rock and
the mystery, but most of it wasn’t that at all.
It was something quite different, as Mr. Spragg
and the merchants that had gone into his daily-paper
scheme found out.

And still the subscriptions came in. It was
running close. The Home Culturers had four
hunderd and thirty-four, and the Literary
Circlers had four hunderd and twenty-nine. Of
course nobody knew how many votes there were
but just us fellows.
That night the first dinner, the Literary
Girders’ dinner, came off, and you’d better
believe it was good eating. Eat! Whee! I
almost busted the band of my pants, and Mark!
you wouldn’t believe what that fat kid mowed
away. I was sure I’d never be able to go to the
dinner the next night and eat a bite. But I
did. Of course we all took quite a lot of exercise
during the day, and didn’t eat much, to save
space.

The Home Culturers’ dinner looked to me
like it was every bit as good as the Literary
Girders’, but among other folks there was a lot
of argument. I don’t know but there might
have been a real squabble if Constable Ginney
hadn’t been there with his star right outside
of his coat, warning folks to keep the peace. He
scared ’em.

The last day was a tough one for all the women
in the contest. They worked like anything,
both getting ready for the food show and hauling
in the last subscriptions that were to be had.
We were busy, too, and as the day moved along
we began to get kind of worried. Goodness
knows, when we saw how things was coming
we had reason enough to worry.

Mark went out to get the last items of news
before we went to press, and I went with him.
We saw the afternoon train come in, and there
got off it Mr. Spragg, who grinned at us like the
cat that ate the canary, and a whopping big
man that was tanned and dark as an Indian.
He went to the hotel, and Mark told me to go
in and write what items I had while he went to
the hotel to see if there was anything there.
He didn’t come back for quite a while, and I
went out again. I passed the hotel and saw
him talking to the big man, both of them as
earnest as if they was planning to run off with
the bank.

When Mark came back he looked all excited,
and fidgeted around as if it was hard for him to
hold himself in. It was easy to see something
had happened.

“Well?” says I.

“If I was to t-t-tell you now,” says he, “it
would spile a m-mighty fine s’prise for you,”
says he.

“Huh!” says I. “I’d rather suffer from a
spoiled surprise,” I says, “than to be worn to
the bone by curiosity.”

“I’ll take a chance,” says he.

“You hain’t takin’ any chance,” says I.
“You *know*.”

“You b-bet I do,” says he, and that was all
I could get out of him.

“How about Pekoe?” says I. “Is he goin’
to be left out at the farm forever?”

“Pekoe’s comfortable,” says he. “I guess
he’s about due to c-c-come to town.”

Subscriptions straggled in all the afternoon,
one at a time. The way the contest was turning
out for us was great. We knew we’d have close
to fifteen hunderd paid-up yearly subscribers,
and Mark says every newspaper man in the
world admits a country weekly can make good
money with that many.

“But Spragg’s daily?” says I.

“He can’t t-t-take our subscribers away from
us for a year,” says he.

“He kin git the advertisin’ with his cooperative
scheme, though,” says I.

“Maybe,” says he, “and ag’in m-maybe not.
I’ve been doin’ a leetle f-figgerin’ for Spragg’s
benefit—and for our own, too. We got to quit
runnin’ this paper perty soon and go back to
school. Well?”

“Yes,” says I, “what then?”

“Why,” says he, “we got either to sell it or
to hire an editor to run it.”

“That’s right,” says I.

“Well,” says he, “it l-looks to me l-like it
would be the best idee to sell it.”

“If we kin,” says I.

“The f-fellers that’s int’rested with Spragg
has a meetin’ to-morrow n-night,” says he.
“I’d l-like to know what’ll turn up.”

“Spragg seems perty well pleased,” says I.

“Spragg,” says he, “would git along b-better
if he done more thinkin’ and less t-talkin’.”

“Where’s Rock?” says I.

“Down to the hotel,” says Mark, with a funny
look in his eye. “I don’t calc’late we’ll see
Rock ’fore night.”

“That’s funny,” says I.

“’Tain’t so funny as you m-might think,”
says he.

Tallow was keeping count of subscriptions,
and every little while he’d come and tell us how
many was in.

“Lit’ry Circlers is two ahead,” says he, about
four o’clock. The contest was goin’ to close
at five, so it looked like the Circlers had it. But
in come Mrs. Bobbin with three more, and put
the Culturers jest one ahead. That was all till
the clock was ’most ready to strike, when in come
Mrs. Strubber with one. One!

Mark and I looked at each other, and then
we looked at Tallow and Plunk. It was a tie.
Them women had got four hunderd and forty-six
subscriptions for each club—and the fat was
in the fire. Anything else could have happened
and made a little trouble, maybe, but to have
this thing end up in a tie was to bring on a
regular war.

“Mark,” says I, “I guess I got to go out of
town for a couple of days—over to Uncle
Oscar’s.”

He grinned.

“We’re up against it, Binney,” says he, “but
we got to stick it out.”

“Let’s give one of ’em an extry,” says Tallow,
“that’ll fix the tie.”

“No,” says Mark. “This t-t-thing has been
run fair, and it’ll be f-f-finished fair. We’ll
take what’s comin’ to us, and git out of it the
best we can. Anyhow,” says he, beginning to
shake all over, “it’ll be the f-funniest thing that
ever happened in Wicksville.”

“Yes,” says I, “I’ll bet we laugh like anythin’
at it when our folks come to the hospital to tell
us about it. A tie,” says I. “Think of the row
them women will make when they find out
they’re tied.”

“I’m t-thinkin’ about it,” says Mark.

CHAPTER XXII
============

There wasn’t anything for us fellows to do
but to go through with the thing now.
We couldn’t very well duck out and then ever
show our faces again in Wicksville. So right
after supper we went down and opened up the
hall where the food show was, and got things
ready for the massacre. I kind of wished the
times that Mark played games about would
come back for a while. I mean when knights
and such-like fellows went around with cast-iron
nightgowns on so that you couldn’t hurt
them without you found the combination to the
safe and got the door open. That’s what Mark
calls a mixed metaphor. It says what I mean,
so I don’t care what he calls it. Anyhow, I
don’t believe he knows what he’s talking about.

Well, about seven o’clock the crowd began to
come. They came in a jam. There was to be
a program, and at the end of it the announcement
was to be made who had won the contest.
The program started up at eight o’clock, and
meanwhile all of us but Mark had been back
at the *Trumpet* office, helping get out the paper.
That was to be part of the evening’s excitement,
too.

Pretty soon folks began to get tired of the
program and began to yell for the decision of
the contest. It kept getting louder and louder,
till Mark judged it was best to let them have
it.

“I’ll d-do it,” says he. “I’m the one that
t-thought it up, so I’ll make the announcement
and t-take what’s comin’. You fellers better
skip.”

“Nix,” I says. “We’re goin’ to be right with
you.”

“What you git we git,” says Plunk.

We listened and could hear the folks stamping
their feet and clapping and yelling.

“Who won? Who won?” they started to
yell over and over.

“Here goes,” says Mark, and out he went.
We stuck right to his heels. The first thing I
noticed, even in all that crowd, was Rock
standing over at one side, and with a hand on
his shoulder was the big man that we saw getting
off the train. I nudged Plunk, and *he* looked,
and Rock saw us and waved his hand.

Mark began. He made a regular speech, and
it kept getting longer and longer, because he
hated to come to the point and announce that
nobody had won and that it was a tie. But he
had to at last, because folks began to holler
again.

Finally he says, “T-this has been a wonderful
contest, ladies and gentlemen. There hain’t
ever been sich a contest in Wicksville, and—if
I got anything to d-d-do with it—there’ll never
be another.” I believed *that* all right.

“The l-ladies,” says he, “has proved some-thin’.
They have p-proved that nobody in the
world kin beat the wimmin of Wicksville—not
even the wimmin of Wicksville themselves.”
He stopped and looked around, and though he
was pretty uncertain in his mind, he grinned
jest as calm as a cabbage.

“The number of subscriptions got by the
Home Culturers,” says he, “is four hunderd
and f-f-forty-six.”

There was yells and stamping from the Home
Culturers.

“The n-number of subscriptions got by the
Lit’ry Circlers is four hunderd and f-f-forty-six,”
says he.

There was yells and stamping, but all of a
sudden they stopped, and somebody yelled,
“What’s that?”

“It’s a tie,” says Mark. “B-both got the
s-same number.”

For a minute folks jest looked at one another,
and then Mrs. Strubber and Mrs. Bobbin
jumped to their feet and began talking at once.
I could catch sich words as “cheat,” and “put-up
job,” and “crooked,” and like that.

“L-ladies,” says Mark, “you’ve kept count of
how many subscriptions you got, hain’t you?”

“Yes,” says both of ’em.

“What’s your count, Mrs. Strubber?” says
he.

“We got the number you said, but *they* never
did. Our number is right. But them wimmin—why,
we must ’a’ beat ’em by fifty.”

“Mis’ Bobbin,” says Mark, “how do you
make your c-count?”

“We make it same as yourn for us,” says
she, “but them Lit’ry Circlers didn’t come
within ninety of us. I *know*,” says she.

“L-ladies and gentlemen,” says Mark, “both
ladies says their c-count agrees with mine. Both
m-makes their n-number f-four hunderd and
f-f-forty-six. I guess that shows this contest
was on the s-square. If it wasn’t d’you think
I’d ’a’ dared stand up here and announce it
was a tie?”

“Don’t see how you dared, anyhow,” yelled
Uncle Ike Bond. “I wouldn’t ’a’ done it for
a farm.”

“What we goin’ to do?” says Mrs. Strubber.
“We can’t leave this here undecided now. The
town wouldn’t never git over it. Somebody
got to be the champeen.”

“You bet,” says Mrs. Bobbin, “and the
Home Culturers has got to be it. I guess our
husbands hain’t goin’ to stand around and let
us git done out of our rights.”

“I guess ourn hain’t either,” says Mrs.
Strubber, and right there it sure looked like
the furniture was going to get busted.

Then Mark got an idea.

“L-ladies,” says he, “I got a way out of it.
T-there’s a man here that hain’t subscribed.
Git him up here, and let them two clubs argue
him into t-takin’ a subscription, and the side
that gits him wins.”

They thought that over a minute, and then
agreed.

“Who’s the man?” says all of them at once.

“Uncle Ike Bond,” says Mark, with a little
grin. “He’s just got home from a visit.”

“Uncle Ike! ... Uncle Ike!” yelled everybody,
and started to push the old ’bus-driver
to the front.

“Hey!” says he. “Hey, Mark Tidd, what I
ever done to you I should be got into this? I
hain’t goin’ to. No, siree. You don’t git *me*
decidin’ no sich fight. I got respect for my
skin. If I was to decide this here, why, I’d
have to lick every husband on the side I was
decidin’ ag’in’. Not that I can’t do it—but I
hain’t as spry and eager as I was once. No,
siree,” says he, and he made a jump sideways,
and scrambled up onto the window-sill, with
fifty folks grabbing after him, and out he jumped.
Well, that finished *that*.

Mark was laughing inside like everything.
“There’s another m-man here,” says he. “He’s
big enough so’s nobody’s husband’ll be anxious
to t-t-tackle him. He’s *doggone* big,” says
Mark, “and t-there he stands. Mr. Armitage
is his n-name,” says Mark.

*Armitage!*

You could have knocked me galley-west with
a feather. I seen it all in a minute.

“Mr. Armitage,” says Mark, “won’t you
s-s-step forward and—”

“Risk my life?” finishes up the big man that
was standing by Rock. “Why,” says he,
“I’ll step forward and say something, and
when I get through maybe you ladies will be
willing to let things stand as they are—and
glad to.”

He came surging up forward, and stood there,
big and quiet, looking down on everybody.

“First,” says he, “I want to tell you something
about myself.” It was funny, but they
quieted right down and listened. Not a yell
or a holler.

“After that,” says he, “I want to read you a
piece in the Wicksville *Trumpet*, the best
country paper in America,” says he, and at
that Mark and us kids swelled all up.

“I’m a happy man,” says he, “because, after
a dozen years, I’ve got my son back again. In
that dozen years,” he says, “I’ve been working
and fighting and starving and risking death for
my son, but maybe it would have been better
if I’d stayed home and got a job and been right
by his side. But there was a time when I
was sore in my heart because his mother died.”
He stopped just a second. Then he went on.
“I couldn’t bear to stay still, so I put my little
son in a school and went off to Alaska. I
thought I’d find gold there, but I didn’t find
enough. After that I went to South America
and to Africa and to China, and all over the
world, always keeping my son in schools, and
not seeing him nor scarcely ever writing to
him. But I loved him just the same—like a
father ought to. But I was set on coming home
to him rich, so he’d be proud of me. That was
wrong. I know it now. He’d have been proud
of me anyhow, because he’s that kind. Well, I
thought I was dying, and sent a friend to take
my son to a man that should have looked after
him—and that man died, but I got well. Today
I came back and found my son, and saw
him for the first time since he was in dresses.
I found he had made friends, four friends, who
had done for him more than I had ever done.
These friends had worked for him. These
friends had found him alone in a big house,
practically a prisoner, not knowing who he was
or why he was there. My boy was in a bad
mix-up, I can tell you. And I was far away.
Well, these four friends, just out of the goodness
of their hearts, went to work, and solved the
mystery that was surrounding my son, and
proved who he was, and have put him in the way
of being heir to a great deal of money. Not that
*that* matters now, for I found my mine at last
and have ten times as much as Mr. Wigglesworth—”

He stopped. “But here’s to-day’s *Trumpet*.
Let me read to you the real story. Then I want
to say to you ladies that this contest has come
out just the way it should have. It has proved
that neither side is better than the other. It
has proved that Wicksville ought to be proud of
you, and that you ought to be so proud of each
other that you’d join together and not be Home
Culturers or Literary Circlers, but just one
big club—The Wicksville Women’s Club, with
everybody a member and working hard for the
benefit of the town and of everybody in it.”

Then he read, slow and emphatic, the story
of Rock. He read how we had found him, and
about all we had done, and about the paper Mr.
Wigglesworth left, and about how we had got
the paper. And—this was news to all of us
but Mark—that Rock was Mr. Wigglesworth’s
grandson, and Rock’s mother was Mr. Wigglesworth’s
daughter, who had married Mr. Armitage
against her father’s will, and he wouldn’t
ever have anything to do with her again.

Well, people’s eyes almost popped out of their
heads when they heard what had been going on
right under their heads. When Mr. Armitage
was done reading he laid his hand on Mark’s
shoulder and says, “Here’s the boy that
puzzled it out.”

“Binney and Plunk and Tallow did as
m-m-much as me,” says Mark.

“Yes,” says Mr. Armitage, turning to us, “and
I want to thank them, publicly, too. Four of the
squarest, nerviest, cleverest boys I ever saw.”

“And now,” says he, “what do you ladies
think? Won’t it be better to have one big club,
working for the good of everybody, than two
clubs pulling against each other?”

Mrs. Strubber looked at Mrs. Bobbin and
Mrs. Bobbin looked back; then—and there was
streaks down their faces where the tears had
been running—they got up all at once and
walked toward each other and shook hands.

That ended *that*.

But us fellows had a hard time getting away.
Everybody wanted to shake hands and have us
tell about it, and taffy us, but we did wriggle
through, with Rock and his father following us,
and sneaked to the office. And there we had a
regular reunion. I tell you Mr. Armitage was
a fine man, and he had a mess of adventure
stories to tell that just lifted the hair off from
your head.

Best of it is he’s going to live here with Rock
on the Wigglesworth place.

We talked a long time, and then went home
to bed.

CHAPTER XXIII
=============

In the newspaper was another piece that was
interesting to a lot of people, besides the
piece about Rock. It was one Mark wrote about
a daily newspaper such as Spragg was trying
to get up. Mark had written to everybody he
could think of that would know about it, and
got facts and figures, and set them right down
in print where everybody could see.

He showed how much it would cost to *start*
such a paper. He showed how much it would
cost to run it a year, and how much it would
have to be paid for advertising, and how much
for subscriptions, and how many subscribers it
would have to have to live at all.

Then he proved the thing that upset Spragg’s
apple-cart—that the merchants wouldn’t get
their advertising for nothing, but that they would
have to advertise six days a week instead of one,
and that, even dividing up what profits there
were, the merchants would have to spend about
five times as much as they ever had before, not
counting in what they put into the scheme to
start it.

Well, when the business men read that article,
and saw who Mark got his information from
and all, they were pretty sick, because they had
already gone into it and put up quite a lot of
money. Some of them came in to see Mark, but
he said he wouldn’t talk then, but would wait
till the meeting that night.

That’s what he did. We all went to it.
Spragg was there, looking pretty sick, and Lawyer
Jones went with us. First Spragg raved and
talked, but it didn’t do any good. They had
formed a company, and Spragg had *some* money
in it, as well as anybody else. He didn’t like
to see the way things were going. And besides,
he wasn’t getting even with Mark.

Then Mark got up and repeated some of his
figures, and ended up by saying:

“You’ve g-g-got up a company to run a
n-newspaper, so why don’t you run one? We
f-f-fellers has got to go back to school, but we’ve
built up the *Trumpet* so’s it’s a *good* paper,
with fifteen hunderd subscribers, and it’s
m-makin’ good money. Now, why don’t you
buy it, you b-business men, and run it for the
benefit of Wicksville and yourselves? Hire a
good editor and give this county the b-b-best
newspaper in the State. It’s all ready. All
you got to do is t-take it over. We’ll sell
cheap.”

“How much?” says. Mr. Pawl, who was the
chairman.

“Well,” says Mark, “we got our p-plant and
stock, that’s worth s-somethin’. We got fifteen
hunderd subscribers, and that’s worth a lot,
for they’ve got a year to run, and we’ve got
cash in the bank. About twelve hunderd
d-d-dollars. I’ll tell you what. Give us t-t-two
thousand dollars, and we’ll call it a deal.”

Well, they figgered, and Lawyer Jones figgered
with them, and Mark figgered with them, until
at last they agreed, and a contract was made
and signed sayin’ the money would be paid over
next day. Then Mark says:

“You’re goin’ to n-need an editor right off.
You got a n-newspaper man here. Maybe he
hain’t acted jest right to us, but for all that,
maybe he’s a good man. Why d-don’t you
give Spragg a chance at b-bein’ editor? He’s
worked to git up this company of yourn. It’ll
be up to him to make good.”

Spragg looked queer at Mark, but didn’t say
a word till the meeting decided to give him a
try. Then he walked over to Mark and says,
holding out his hand:

“What you just did, Mark Tidd, is a mighty
fine thing, and I’m going to deserve it. And
if you’re ever looking for a friend come to me—Spragg.”
That was all.

And so I guess that’s about all of everything.
We sold out for two thousand dollars, which
Mark divided between us, fair and square, and
we put it in the bank. We knew Mark was a
business man, and he had done things before
that made folks take notice, but I don’t know
as he’ll ever do a job of work harder than
taking a busted-down newspaper that he bought
for three-four hunderd dollars, and making it a
first-class newspaper, and selling out for such
a profit—just to pass away a vacation.

Some day he’s going to make Rockefeller hustle.

.. container:: center

    THE END

.. clearpage::

.. container:: left noindent white-space-pre-line

    Books by

    CLARENCE BUDINGTON KELLAND

    | THE HIGHFLYERS
    | MARK TIDD, MANUFACTURER
    | THE SOURCE
    | SUDDEN JIM
    | THE HIDDEN SPRING
    | MARK TIDD
    | MARK TIDD IN THE BACKWOODS
    | MARK TIDD IN BUSINESS
    | MARK TIDD’S CITADEL
    | MARK TIDD, EDITOR
    | THIRTY PIECES OF SILVER

    HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK

    Established 1817

.. vspace:: 6

.. pgfooter::
