The editor laughed. “Why! it would cost you a hundred dollars.”
“I'll take it,” repeated Mr. Dimmidge.
“But,” said the editor gravely, “the same notice in a small space will serve your purpose and be quite legal.”
“Never you mind that, lad! It's the looks of the thing I'm arter, and not the expense. I'll take that column.”
The editor called in the foreman and showed him the copy. “Can you display that so as to fill a column?”
The foreman grasped the situation promptly. It would be big business for the paper. “Yes,” he said meditatively, “that bold-faced election type will do it.”
Mr. Dimmidge's face brightened. The expression “bold-faced” pleased him. “That's it! I told you. I want to bill her in a portion of the paper.”
“I might put in a cut,” said the foreman suggestively; “something like this.” He took a venerable woodcut from the case. I grieve to say it was one which, until the middle of the present century, was common enough in the newspaper offices in the Southwest. It showed the running figure of a negro woman carrying her personal property in a knotted handkerchief slung from a stick over her shoulder, and was supposed to represent “a fugitive slave.”
Mr. Dimmidge's eyes brightened. “I'll take that, too. It's a little dark-complected for Mrs. P., but it will do. Now roon away, lad,” he said to the foreman, as he quietly pushed him into the outer office again and closed the door. Then, facing the surprised editor, he said, “Theer's another notiss I want ye to put in your paper; but that's atween US. Not a word to THEM,” he indicated the banished foreman with a jerk of his thumb. “Sabe? I want you to put this in another part o' your paper, quite innocent-like, ye know.” He drew from his pocket a gray wallet, and taking out a slip of paper read from it gravely, “'If this should meet the eye of R. B., look out for M. J. D. He is on your track. When this you see write a line to E. J. D., Elktown Post Office.' I want this to go in as 'Personal and Private'—sabe?—like them notisses in the big 'Frisco papers.”
“I see,” said the editor, laying it aside. “It shall go in the same issue in another column.”