"Right-o!" answered Pete, "you can put me down as official photographer." "I don't see," said one of the smaller lads, "where that rain-gauge is so hard to make. I'll make one and put it up at my place." "Dad's got an old barometer," suggested another, "that he used to have when he was a steamboat skipper. I'm sure he'd let me have it. It's in the attic now, where nobody looks at it." "Some of us might measure the amount of sunshine," said Ross. "Isn't there some way of doing that, Mr. Levin?" "Indeed there is," the Forecaster replied. "Why, in some places, they run machinery by sunshine. There is a big solar engine at Pasadena, in California, where they pump water and irrigate an orchard just by an arrangement of mirrors. Even a small one would run quite a good-sized engine." "Gimme that! Oh, gimme that!" burst in another of the boys, who had been passive theretofore but who was absorbed in mechanics. "I'll be tickled to have an engine run by sunshine." The Weather Forecaster looked around with a smile at the enthusiastic group. "It seems to me," he said, "that with an official photographer, an official wind-measurer, an official sunshine recorder, an official wireless station, a club-house and an editor with an official publication, 'The Mississippi League of the Weather' is mighty well launched on its way. "Now, I'm going to have the fun of making the first motion. I move you, Mr. Chairman, that the League come into the house and hold its first official feast!" CHAPTER IV THE MASSACRE OF AN ARMY "Where's the boss?" queried a strange voice, one afternoon. The entire mechanical staff of the _Issaquena County Weather Herald_, consisting of Fred Lang, publisher and editor-in-chief, aged fifteen, and a general assistant with the blackest face and the whitest teeth in the county, aged seventy, named Dan'l, turned at the question. "Why?" asked Fred. The stranger stepped into the office of the _Herald_. "I'd be wishful to see the foreman," he said, with a twinkle in his eye, "that's if he's not too busy." Fred grinned in response. "I guess I'm the foreman," he said. "I'm lookin' for a job," the new-comer explained. "What kind of a job?" "Any kind of a job in a printin' shop," the Irishman replied. "I'm an old-timer. There's nothin' about printin' I don't know." "Have you seen a copy of our paper?" asked Fred. "I have so," was the reply, "I've got it with me, right here." He pulled from his pocket the latest number of the little four-page sheet. "'Tis an illigant publication," he went on, "but I'm thinkin' that you're in sore need of a printer." "Does it look so bad?" queried the "foreman." "The worst of it is, I don't know how to make it any better." "I'm not saying that it's bad, but there's a deal to be learnt about printin'," the journeyman declared. "I'm thinkin' your compositor hasn't had overmuch experience."