BIRDMAN FURNISHES NEW SENSATION!

Modern Lochinvar Lands in Jail!

Thunder Bird Carries Maiden Off.

Telephone Halts Flight in County Clerk’s Office, Where Couple is Arrested.  Abductor Attacks Sheriff Viciously.  Is Manacled in Presence of Hysterical Young Heiress Who Faints as Her Lover is Overpowered.  Irate Father Hurries to the Scene.

After keeping the country in a turmoil of excitement over his disappearance in an airplane, the Skyrider, young Jewel, flies boldly to Rolling R ranch and abducts beautiful Mary V Selmer, only daughter of the rich rancher who led the search for the missing birdman.

Romance is not dead, though airplanes have taken the place of horses when young Lochinvar goes boldly out to steal himself a bride.  Modern inventions cannot cool the hot blood of youth, as young Jewel has once more proven.  This sensational young man, apparently not content with the uproar of the country for the past three days, when he was believed to be lost on the desert with his airplane, attempts one adventure too many.  When he brazenly carried off his sweetheart in his airplane he forgot to first cut the telephone wire.  That oversight cost him dear, for now he languishes in jail, while the young lady, who is under age, is being held by the sheriff—­

It was sickening, because in a measure it was true, though he had never thought of emulating Lochinvar or any one else.  He had neither thought nor cared about the public and what it would think, and the blatant way in which he had been made to entertain the country at large humiliated him beyond words.

He picked up the square, white envelope tightly sealed and addressed in Mary V’s straight, uncompromising chirography, turned it over, reconsidered opening it, and flipped it upon the cot.

“There was an answer expected,” the jailer lingered to hint broadly.  “The young lady is waiting, and she seemed right anxious.”

But Johnny merely walked to the barred window and stared across at the blank wall of another building fifteen feet away, and in a moment the jailer went away and left him alone, which was what Johnny wanted most.

After a while he opened Mary V’s letter and read it, scowling and biting his lips.  Mary V, it would seem, had read all that the papers had to say, and was considerably upset by the facetious tone of most of the articles.

“. . . and I think it’s perfectly terrible, the way everybody stares and whispers and grins.  What in the world made you act the way you did and get arrested.  And those were reporters that you shoved out of the office, too, and that is why they wrote about us in such a horrid way.  And I shall never be able to live it down.  I shall be considered hysterical and always fainting, which is not true and a perfect libel which they ought to be sent to jail for printing.  I shall probably have that horrid