“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.