"Joke!" repeated the latest comer, indignantly. "There isn't any joke. What gave you that idea? It came pretty near being serious, I can tell you. One of the electric feed-wires got loose in the storm yesterday, and hung down in front of Jimmy's house on Pine Street. Before anybody else saw it, that crazy kid Georgie had to go out and grab hold of it with both hands." He paused an instant for breath, and a concerted exclamation went up from the crowd that had gathered swiftly about him. "Gee!" exclaimed stout Harry Vedder. "And the current still on, I s'pose?" "Of course it was! Dad told me how many volts. I forget. Anyhow, Georgie got hold and couldn't let go. They said he yelled to beat the band, and then went clean out. A crowd got around right away, but nobody seemed to know what to do. One man ran in and started 'phoning for 'em to turn off the current; and while he was gone, what do you think happened? A kid with a bunch of papers came along, and jumped right in and grabbed hold of Georgie to pull him off the wire. They said that when the current hit him it was like being kicked by a horse. He went clean across the street and banged his head an awful whack on the curb. He got up sort of groggy, but he must have been a game one, for he came right back, wrapped some newspapers around his hands, and had Georgie loose in a jiffy!" "Great!" came in an appreciative chorus. Then one of the third-grade boys piped up curiously. "But what good was the newspaper?" "Insulation, of course," spoke up Sherman Ward, from the outskirts of the group. He was tall enough to look over the heads of most of the fellows, and spoke with a certain authority. "If he hadn't used them he'd have got the shock as he did the first time. That's some idea, though, fellows. I don't believe I'd have remembered, right off the bat, that paper was a non-conductor. Who was he, Court?" "Nobody knows; that's the funny part of it." Court thrust back a dangling lock of brown hair with a characteristic gesture. "It was pretty near dark, and everybody was excited, and all that, Mrs. Warren told Dad when he was over this morning. She said she only noticed that he wasn't so very tall and carried his papers in a bag over one shoulder. She forgot all about him till after they'd got the kid into the house and the doctor had come. Then when she sent somebody out to see, the chap had gone."