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

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

Thad got busy, and began to tell how they had first ran across the strange hobo in his camp, cooking a meal.  He continued the story with a description of how the long wandering Brother Lu had been so warmly welcomed by Matilda and her sick husband, and thereupon deliberately settled down to enjoying himself at their expense.

Thad was a pretty good hand at narrating a yarn, and he worked the interest up by degrees until he had Jim’s eyes as round as saucers, while he hung upon every word that was spoken.  Hugh only broke in once in a while to add a few sentences to something his chum said.

Finally the climax was reached when Thad explained the scheme he and Hugh had concocted between them, and how much they would appreciate the assistance of Jim in this dilemma.

The temporary editor pursed up his lips and looked serious.  He was thinking, and gradually a grin began to creep across his thin little face.

“Why, I guess it could be worked out, fellows,” he finally remarked, greatly to the satisfaction of the eager Thad.  “Course I can do the writeup part as easy as falling off a fence, because it comes natural for me to be able to put any old thing down on paper and hash it up in a most interesting way.  I’ll have a story that will make folks sit up and take notice all right.”

“I hope, though, Jim,” said Thad, “you won’t overdo the thing, because you see we haven’t a peg to hang it on, since we don’t know what sort of a crime the man might have done away down there in Texas to make Marshal Hastings come so far after him.  You’ll draw it a bit mild, won’t you, Jim?  Just strong enough to strike terror to the heart of that rascal, Brother Lu?”

“That’s all right, Thad, you leave it to me,” asserted Jim, with a confidence born of experience, as well as reliance on his powers of description and invention.  “Yes, I can do the thing to the king’s taste.  Why, in such a case it’s my habit to make myself actually believe in my work.  Right now I can actually see the ferocious and not-to-be-denied Marshal Hastings.