CHAPTER IX.
SETTING THE MAN TRAP Hugh jumped up from his chair and clapped a cap on his head.
"It's now about four o'clock of a Friday afternoon," he remarked, "and if we could only run across Jim Pettigrew, and he got interested in our story, why it might not be too late to get the little write-up arranged before they went to press tonight." Thad was all animation.
"Fine! Let's rush around to the _Courier_ office and see Jim!" he hastened to say.

"I've an idea he's a sort of Jack-of-all-trades there, writing up news, setting type in an emergency, and even helping turn off the limited edition of about five hundred copies of the paper that are run every week.

So, as Friday night is the climax to their week's work, we're likely to find Jim there with his coat off, and on the job." They soon arrived at the small building on a side street where the local paper had its offices, and, indeed, every other thing connected with it, for that matter.
"There's Jim sitting in the editor's chair," observed Thad, looking through a dusty window.
"Must be Mr.Adoiphus Hanks, who owns and edits the _Courier_, is out of town just at present.

Say, that would just suit us to a fraction, wouldn't it, Hugh ?" "It might make things easier for us," admitted the other; and then they burst in on the important if diminutive Jim, who received them with all the airs of a metropolitan editor.
"Glad to see you, boys," he told them; "just take seats, will you, and excuse me for three minutes.

I'm winding up the main editorial for this week's issue.