Of course, the robbery of the diamond and Dick's brilliant rounding up of the thief got into the afternoon papers. All the merchants and clerks of the jewelry district downtown were talking about it before closing-up time. Dick Darling, the boy in the knickerbockers, was voted an uncommonly smart lad, and people who knew Mr. Bacon told him so. One of Bacon's clerks after reading the story in the paper called Dick over and showed it to him. Dick bought a couple of papers on his way home and read both accounts. When he got to the house he handed one of the papers to his mother and called her attention to the story. She read it and was, of course, much surprised. Dick supplied her with many additional particulars not in the paper. "Mr. Bacon must be greatly pleased with you," said Mrs. Darling. "Yes, mother, I dare say he thinks I'm all to the good." His sisters nearly always read the evening paper on their way home. The diamond theft having been given an important position on the first page of the papers they bought that afternoon, it attracted their attention right away. When they saw that the theft had taken place at the store where their brother was employed, they read on with added interest. Then when they saw Dick's name in cold type they became still more interested. As he proved to be the chief figure in the story, next to the thief, they grew quite excited over the story. Had they been together, their exclamations and talk would have attracted attention in the car, but they seldom came together on the same car or train, and so they waited till they reached home to loosen up their tongues. And what a jabbering there was in the little flat when they arrived within a few minutes of each other. They surrounded their brother and plied him with questions, till he broke away, declaring that they made his head ring. Their excitement lasted all through supper. The sum total of their opinion was that Dick was a regular hero, and they were awfully proud of him. The morning papers repeated the story with a few additional details, and Dick read it over again. Then he turned his attention to the other news. He generally saw everything that was in the papers, though he didn't read everything, because he hadn't time to do so. A paragraph, however, caught his attention this morning which interested him. It told of the escape of Bulger and Parker from the Carlin jail. The jail was an old one, and they had been lodged in a cell the window bars of which proved to have become defective. At any rate, during the short time they were locked up there, they managed to loosen two of the bars so they could be removed during the night. From the window they reached the jail yard, scaled the tall wall with its rusty spikes, and got away. Their escape was not discovered until morning, when officers were at once sent out to look for them.