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“Quite enough,” said Mrs. Dimmidge emphatically. She took a roll of greenbacks from her pocket, selected a hundred-dollar bill and then a five, and laid them before the editor. “Young man,” she said, with a certain demure gravity, “you’ve done me a heap o’ good. I never spent money with more satisfaction than this. I never thought much o’ the ‘power o’ the Press,’ as you call it, afore. But this has been a right comfortable visit, and I’m glad I ketched you alone. But you understand one thing: this yer visit, and WHO I am, is betwixt you and me only.”

“Of course I must say that the advertisement was AUTHORIZED,” returned the editor. “I’m only the temporary editor. The proprietor is away.”

“So much the better,” said the lady complacently. “You just say you found it on your desk with the money; but don’t you give me away.”

“I can promise you that the secret of your personal visit is safe with me,” said the young man, with a bow, as Mrs. Dimmidge rose. “Let me see you to your horse,” he added. “It’s quite dark in the woods.”

“I can see well enough alone, and it’s just as well you shouldn’t know HOW I kem or HOW I went away. Enough for you to know that I’ll be miles away before that paper comes out. So stay where you are.”

She pressed his hand frankly and firmly, gathered up her riding-skirt, slipped backwards to the door, and the next moment rustled away into the darkness.

Early the next morning the editor handed Mrs. Dimmidge’s advertisement, and the woodcut he had selected, to his foreman. He was purposely brief in his directions, so as to avoid inquiry, and retired to his sanctum. In the space of a few moments the foreman entered with a slight embarrassment of manner.

“You’ll excuse my speaking to you, sir,” he said, with a singular mixture of humility and cunning. “It’s no business of mine, I know; but I thought I ought to tell you that this yer kind o’ thing won’t pay any more,–it’s about played out!”

“I don’t think I understand you,” said the editor loftily, but with an inward misgiving. “You don’t mean to say that a regular, actual advertisement”–

“Of course, I know all that,” said the foreman, with a peculiar smile; “and I’m ready to back you up in it, and so’s the boy; but it won’t pay.”

“It HAS paid a hundred and five dollars,” said the editor, taking the notes from his pocket; “so I’d advise you to simply attend to your duty and set it up.”

A look of surprise, followed, however, by a kind of pitying smile, passed over the foreman’s face. “Of course, sir, THAT’S all right, and you know your own business; but if you think that the new advertisement will pay this time as the other one did, and whoop up another column from an advertiser, I’m afraid you’ll slip up. It’s a little ‘off color’ now,–not ‘up to date,’–if it ain’t a regular ‘back number,’ as you’ll see.”

“Meantime I’ll dispense with your advice,” said the editor curtly, “and I think you had better let our subscribers and advertisers do the same, or the ‘Clarion’ might also be obliged to dispense with your SERVICES.”

“I ain’t no blab,” said the foreman, in an aggrieved manner, “and I don’t intend to give the show away even if it don’t PAY. But I thought I’d tell you, because I know the folks round here better than you do.”

He was right. No sooner had the advertisement appeared than the editor found that everybody believed it to be a sheer invention of his own to “once more boom” the “Clarion.” If they had doubted MR. Dimmidge, they utterly rejected MRS. Dimmidge as an advertiser! It was a stale joke that nobody would follow up; and on the heels of this came a letter from the editor-in-chief.

MY DEAR BOY,–You meant well, I know, but the second Dimmidge “ad” was a mistake. Still, it was a big bluff of yours to show the money, and I send you back your hundred dollars, hoping you won’t “do it again.” Of course you’ll have to keep the advertisement in the paper for two issues, just as if it were a real thing, and it’s lucky that there’s just now no pressure in our columns. You might have told a better story than that hogwash about your finding the “ad” and a hundred dollars lying loose on your desk one morning. It was rather thin, and I don’t wonder the foreman kicked.