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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10396 ***
+
+ANDY THE ACROBAT
+
+Or
+
+Out With the Greatest Show on Earth
+
+BY
+
+PETER T. HARKNESS
+
+Author of
+
+CHIMPANZEE HUNTERS,
+CIRCUSES--OLD AND NEW,
+HOW A GREAT SHOW TRAVELS, ETC.
+
+1907
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER
+
+     I. EXPELLED
+
+    II. HOOP-LA!
+
+   III. DISASTER
+
+    IV. A BUSINESS PROPOSITION
+
+     V. THE CIRCUS
+
+    VI. CIRCUS TALK
+
+   VII. A WARM RECEPTION
+
+  VIII. "COASTING"
+
+    IX. GOOD-BYE TO FAIRVIEW
+
+     X. A FIRST APPEARANCE
+
+    XI. SAWDUST AND SPANGLES
+
+   XII. AN ARM OF THE LAW
+
+  XIII. ON THE ROAD
+
+   XIV. BILLY BLOW, CLOWN
+
+    XV. ANDY JOINS THE SHOW
+
+   XVI. THE REGISTERED MAIL
+
+  XVII. A WILD JOURNEY
+
+ XVIII. A FREAK OF NATURE
+
+   XIX. CALLED TO ACCOUNT
+
+    XX. ANDY'S ESCAPE
+
+   XXI. A FULL FLEDGED ACROBAT
+
+  XXII. AMONG THE CAGES
+
+ XXIII. FACING THE ENEMY
+
+  XXIV. ANDY'S AUNT
+
+   XXV. A BEAR ON THE RAMPAGE
+
+  XXVI. A CLEVER RUSE
+
+ XXVII. A ROYAL REWARD
+
+XXVIII. "HEY, RUBE!"
+
+  XXIX. A FREE TROLLEY RIDE
+
+   XXX. WITH THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH
+
+  XXXI. CONCLUSION
+
+
+
+ANDY THE ACROBAT
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+EXPELLED
+
+
+"Andrew Wildwood!"
+
+The village schoolmaster of Fairview spoke this name in a tone of
+severity. He accompanied the utterance with a bang of the ruler that
+made the desk before him rattle.
+
+There was fire in his eye and his lip trembled. Half of the twenty odd
+scholars before him looked frightened, the others interested. None had
+ever before seen the dull, sleepy pedagogue so wrought up.
+
+All eyes were fixed on a lad of about sixteen, seated in the front row
+of desks.
+
+The name called out applied to him. It had been abbreviated so commonly,
+however, that its full dignity seemed to daze him for the moment.
+
+Andrew Wildwood slowly arose, his big, fearless eyes fixed dubiously on
+the schoolmaster.
+
+"Yes, sir," he said.
+
+"Step forward, sir."
+
+Andy Wildwood did so. He was now in full view of the other scholars. Mr.
+Darrow also arose. He thrust one hand behind his long coat tails,
+twirling them fiercely. From the little platform that was his throne he
+glared down at the unabashed Andy. In his other hand he flourished the
+long black ruler threateningly.
+
+He pointed a terrible finger towards two desks, about four feet apart,
+at one side of the room. The desk nearest to the wall had its top split
+clear across, and one corner was splintered off.
+
+"Did you break that desk?" demanded the pedagogue.
+
+Andy's lips puckered slightly in a comical twist. He had a vivid
+imagination, and the shattered desk suggested an exciting and
+pleasurable moment in the near past. Some one chuckled at the rear of
+the room. Andy's face broke into an irrepressible smile.
+
+"Order!" roared the schoolmaster, bringing down the ruler with a loud
+bang. "Young man, I asked you: did you break that desk?"
+
+"Yes, sir, I'm afraid I smashed it," said Andy in a rather subdued tone.
+"It was an accident."
+
+"He was only fooling, teacher!" in an excited lisp spoke up little Tod
+Smith, the youngest pupil in the school. "He broke the desk, but--say,
+teacher! he did it--yes, sir, Andy did the double somersault, just like
+a real circus actor, and landed square on both feet!"
+
+The eyes of Andy's diminutive champion and admirer sparkled like
+diamonds. A murmur of delight and sympathy went the rounds of the
+schoolroom.
+
+Mr. Darrow glared savagely at the boy. He brandished the ruler wildly,
+sending an ink bottle rolling to the floor. As a titter greeted this
+catastrophe, he lost his temper and dignity completely.
+
+Springing down from the platform, he made a swoop upon Andy. The latter
+stood his ground, and there was a shock. Then Andy was swayed to and fro
+as the schoolmaster grasped his arm.
+
+"Young man," spoke Mr. Darrow in a shaking tone, "this is the limit. An
+example must be made! Last week you tore down the schoolhouse chimney
+with your ridiculous tight rope performances."
+
+"And wasn't it just jolly!" gloated a juvenile gleesome voice in a loud
+whisper.
+
+The schoolmaster swept the room with a shocked glance. It had no effect
+upon the bubbling-over effervescence of his pupils. Every imagination
+was vividly recalling the rope tied from the schoolhouse chimney to a
+near tree. Every heart renewed the thrills that had greeted Andy
+Wildwood's daring walk across the quivering cable.
+
+Then the culminating climax: the giving way of the chimney, a shower of
+bricks--but the young gymnast, safe and serene, dangling from the eaves.
+
+"Last week also," continued the schoolmaster, "you stole Farmer Dale's
+calf and carried it five miles away. You are complained of continually.
+As I said, young man, you have reached the limit. Human patience and
+endurance can go no farther. You are demoralizing this school. And now,"
+concluded Mr. Darrow, his lips setting grimly, "you must toe the mark."
+
+A hush of expectancy, of rare excitement, pervaded the room. The
+schoolmaster swung aloft the ruler with one hand. He swung Andy around
+directly in front of him with the other hand.
+
+Andy's face suddenly grew serious. He tugged to get loose.
+
+"Hold on, Mr. Darrow," he spoke quickly. "You mustn't strike me."
+
+"How? what! defiance on top of rebellion!" shouted the irate pedagogue.
+"Keep your seats!" he roared, as half the school came upright under the
+tense strain of the moment.
+
+The next he was struggling with Andy. Forward and backward then went
+over the clear recitation space. The ruler was dropped in the scrimmage.
+As Mr. Darrow stooped to repossess it, Andy managed to break loose.
+
+Dodging behind the zinc shield that fronted the stove, he caught its top
+with both hands. He moved about presenting a difficult barrier against
+easy capture. Andy looked pretty determined now. The schoolmaster was so
+angry that his face was as red as a piece of flannel. He advanced again
+upon the culprit, so choked up that his lips made only inarticulate
+sounds.
+
+"One minute, please, Mr. Darrow," said Andy. "You mustn't try to whip
+me. I can't stand it, and I won't. It hasn't been the rule here, ever. I
+did wrong, though I couldn't help it, and I'm sorry for it. I'll stand
+double study and staying in from recess and after school for a month, if
+you say so. You can put me in the dark hole and keep me without my
+dinner as long as you like. I have lots of good friends here. I'd be
+ashamed to face them after a whipping--and I won't!"
+
+"Yes, yes--he's right!" rang out an earnest chorus.
+
+"Silence!" roared the schoolmaster. "An example must be made. I shall do
+my duty. Andrew Wildwood--Graham! what do you mean, sir?"
+
+The scholars thrilled, as a new and unexpected element came into the
+situation.
+
+Graham, quite a young man, and double the weight of the schoolmaster,
+had arisen from his seat. He walked quietly between Mr. Darrow and Andy,
+quite pushing back the former gently.
+
+"The lad is right, Mr. Darrow," he said, in his quiet, drawling way. "I
+wouldn't punish him before the scholars if I were you, sir."
+
+"What's this? You interfere!" flared out the pedagogue.
+
+"Don't take it that way, Mr. Darrow," said Graham. "You are displeased,
+and justly so, sir, but boys will be boys. Andy is the right kind of a
+lad, I assure you, only in the wrong kind of a place. They did the same
+thing with me when I was young. If they hadn't, I wouldn't be here
+spelling out words of two syllables at twenty-eight years of age."
+
+Andy's eyes glistened at the big scholar's friendliness. A murmur of
+approbation ran round the room.
+
+Silently the pedagogue fumed. The disaffection of the occasion, mild and
+respectful as it was, disarmed him. He regarded Andy with a despairing
+look. Then he straightened up with great dignity.
+
+"Take your seat, sir!" he ordered Andy severely, marching back to his
+own desk.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Andy humbly.
+
+"Pack up your books."
+
+Andy looked up in dismay. The fixed glint in the schoolmaster's eye told
+him that this new move meant no fooling.
+
+"Now you may go home," resumed Mr. Darrow, as Andy had obeyed his first
+mandate.
+
+Andy kept a stiff upper lip, though he felt that the world was slipping
+away from him.
+
+A picture of an unloving home, a stern, hard mistress who would make use
+of this, his final disgrace, as a continual club and menace to all his
+future peace of mind, fairly appalled him.
+
+He arose to his feet, swinging his strapped up books to and fro airily,
+but there was a dismal catch in his voice as he turned to the teacher's
+desk, and said:
+
+"Mr. Darrow, I guess I would rather take the whipping."
+
+"Too late," pronounced the relentless schoolmaster in icy tones.
+
+And then, as Andy reached the door amid the gruesome silence and awe of
+his sympathetic comrades, Mr. Darrow added the final dreadful words:
+
+"You are expelled."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+HOOP-LA!
+
+
+Andy Wildwood passed out of the village schoolhouse an anxious and
+desolate boy.
+
+The brightest of sunshine gilded the spires and steeples of the village.
+It flooded highway and meadows with rich yellow light, but Andy,
+swinging his school books over his shoulder, walked on with drooping
+head and a cheerless heart.
+
+"It's pretty bad, it's just the very worst!" he said with a deep sigh,
+as he reached a stile and sat down a-straddle of it.
+
+Andy tossed his books up into the hollow of a familiar oak near at hand.
+Then he fell to serious thinking.
+
+His gaze roving over the landscape, lit on the farmhouse of Jabez Dale.
+It revived the recent allusion of the old schoolmaster.
+
+"I didn't steal that calf," declared Andy, straightening up indignantly.
+"Graham, who boards over at Millville, told us boys how Dale had sold a
+cow to a farmer there. He said they took her away from her calf, and the
+poor thing refused to eat. She just paced up and down a pasture fence
+from morning till night, crying for her calf. We got the calf, and
+carried it to its mother. I'll never forget the sight, and I'll never
+regret it, either--and what's best, the man who had got the cow was so
+worked up over its almost human grief, that he paid Dale for the calf,
+too, and kept it."
+
+The memory of the incident brightened up Andy momentarily. Then, his
+glance flitting to the distant roof of a small neat cottage in a pretty
+grove of cedars, his face fell again. He choked on a great lump in
+his throat.
+
+"Ginger!" he whistled dolefully, "how can I ever face the music over
+there!"
+
+The cottage was Andy's home, but the thought had no charm or sweetness
+for the lone orphan boy whom its roof had grudgingly sheltered for the
+past five years.
+
+Once it had belonged to his father. He had died when Andy was ten years
+old. Then it had passed into the legal possession of Mr. Wildwood's
+half-sister, Miss Lavinia Talcott.
+
+This aunt was Andy's nearest relative. He had lived with her since his
+father's death, if it could be called living.
+
+Miss Lavinia's favorite topic was the sure visitation of the sins of the
+father upon his children.
+
+She was of a sour, snappy disposition. Her prim boast and pride was that
+she was a strict disciplinarian.
+
+To a lad of Andy's free and easy nature, her rules and regulations were
+torture and an abomination.
+
+She made him take off his muddy shoes in the woodshed. Woe to him if he
+ever brought a splinter of whittling, or a fragment of nutshell, into
+the distressingly neat kitchen!
+
+Only one day in the week--Sunday--was Andy allowed the honor of sitting
+in the best room.
+
+Then, for six mortal hours his aching limbs were glued to a
+straight-backed chair. There, in parlor state, he sat listening to the
+prim old maid's reading religious works, or some scientific lecture, or
+a dreary dissertation on good behavior.
+
+She never allowed a schoolmate to visit him, even in the well-kept yard.
+She restricted his hours of play. And all the time never gave him a
+loving word or caress.
+
+On the contrary, many times a week Miss Lavinia administered a
+tongue-lashing that suggested perpetual motion.
+
+Mr. Wildwood had been something of an inventor. He had gotten up a
+hoisting derrick that was very clever. It brought him some money. This
+he sunk in an impossible balloon, crippled himself in the initial voyage
+of his airship, and died shortly afterwards of a broken heart.
+
+Andy's mother had died when he was an infant. Thus it was that he fell
+into the charge of his unloving aunt.
+
+It seemed that the latter had loaned Mr. Wildwood some money for his
+scientific experiments. As repayment, when he died, she took the cottage
+and what else was left of the wreck of his former fortune.
+
+Even this she claimed did not pay her up in full, and she made poor Andy
+feel all the time that he was eating the bread of charity.
+
+Andy's grandfather had been a famous sailor. Andy had read an old
+private account among his father's papers of a momentous voyage his
+grandfather had made to the Antarctic circle.
+
+He loved to picture his ancestor among the ship's rigging. He had an
+additional enthusiasm in another description of his father's
+balloon venture.
+
+Andy wished he had been born to fly. He seemed to have inherited a sort
+of natural acrobatic tendency. At ten years of age he was the best boy
+runner and jumper in the village.
+
+The first circus he had seen--not with Miss Lavinia's permission--set
+Andy fairly wild, and later astonished his playmates with prodigious
+feats of walking on a barrel, somersaulting, vaulting with a pole, and
+numerous other amateur gymnastic attainments.
+
+For the past month a circus, now exhibiting in a neighboring town, had
+been advertised in glowing prose and lurid pictures on big billboards
+all over the county.
+
+Juvenile Fairview was set on fire anew with the circus fever. Andy's
+rope-walking feat and double somersault act from desk to desk that
+morning had resulted, getting him into the trouble of his life. It
+furthermore had interrupted other performances on the programme listed
+for later on that very day.
+
+Andy's head had been full of the circus since he had seen its first
+poster at a cross-roads. He could never pass a heap of sawdust without
+cutting a caper.
+
+In the spelling contest, he had stupefied his fellow students by nimbly
+rattling over such words as "megatherian," "stupendous," "zoological
+aggregation," and the like.
+
+One of his sums covered the number of yards a clown could cover in a
+given time on a handspring basis. He had shocked the schoolmaster by
+handing in an essay on "The Art of Bareback Riding."
+
+Andy had tried every acrobatic trick he had seen depicted in the glowing
+advance sheets announcing the circus. To repeated efforts in this
+direction his admiring schoolmates had continually incited him.
+
+He had tried the double somersault in the schoolroom that morning. Andy
+had made a famous success of the experiment, but with the direful result
+of smashing a desk, and subsequent expulsion.
+
+Thinking over all this, Andy realized that the beginning and end of all
+his troubles was his irrepressible tendency towards acrobatic
+performances.
+
+"And I simply can't help it!" he cried in a kind of reckless despair.
+"It's born in me, I guess. Oh, don't I hope Aunt Lavinia turns me out,
+as she has often threatened to do. Say, if she only would, and I could
+join some show, and travel and see things and--live!"
+
+Andy threw himself flat on the green sward. He closed his eyes and gave
+himself up to a rapture of thought.
+
+Gay banners, brightly comparisoned horses, white wildernesses of circus
+tents, tinselled clowns, royal ringmasters, joyful strains of music
+floated through his active brain. It was a day dream of rare beauty, and
+he could not tear himself away from it.
+
+An idle hour went by before Andy realized it. As echoing voices rang out
+on the quiet air, he got to his feet rubbing his eyes as if they
+were dazzled.
+
+"Recess already," Andy said. "Well, I'll lay low until it's over. I
+don't want to meet the boys just now. Then I'll do some more thinking. I
+suppose I've got to decide to go home. Ugh! but I hate to--and I just
+won't until the very last moment."
+
+Andy went in among the shrubbery farther away from the road, but he
+could not hide himself. An active urchin discovered him from a distance.
+He yelled out riotously to his comrades, and they all came trooping
+along pell-mell in Andy's direction.
+
+Their expelled schoolmate and favorite greeted them with a genial smile,
+never showing the white feather in the least.
+
+His chums found him carelessly tossing half-a-dozen crab apples from
+hand to hand. Andy was an adept in "the glass ball act." He described
+rapid semicircles, festoons and double crosses. He shot the green
+objects up into the air in all directions, and went through the
+performance without a break.
+
+"Isn't Andy a crackerjack?" gloated enthusiastic little Tod Smith. "Oh,
+say, Andy, you won't disappoint us now, will you?"
+
+"What about?" inquired Andy.
+
+"The rest of it."
+
+"The rest of what?"
+
+"Your show. You know you promised--"
+
+"Oh, that's all off!" declared Andy gloomily. "I've made trouble enough
+already with my circus antics, I'm thinking."
+
+"Don't you be mean now, Andy Wildwood!" broke in Ned Wilfer, a
+particular friend of the expelled boy. "Old Darrow has given us a double
+recess. We have a good forty minutes to have fun in. Come on."
+
+The speaker seized Andy's reluctant arm and began pulling him towards
+the road.
+
+"Got the horse?" he asked of a companion.
+
+"Sure," eagerly nodded the lad addressed. "I got him fixed up, platform,
+blanket and all, before school. He's tied up, waiting, at the end of
+father's ten-acre lot."
+
+"Yes, and I've got the hoop all ready there, too," chimed in Alf Warren,
+another schoolboy.
+
+"See here, fellows," demurred Andy dubiously, "I haven't much heart for
+frolic. I'm expelled, you know, and there's Aunt Lavinia--"
+
+"Forget it!" interrupted Ned. "That will all right itself."
+
+Andy consented to accompany the gleeful, expectant throng. They had
+arranged the night before to hold an amateur circus exhibition "on their
+own hook."
+
+One boy had agreed to provide the "fiery steed" for the occasion. Alf
+Warren was to be property man, and donate the blazing hoop.
+
+They soon reached the corner of the ten-acre lot. There, tethered to a
+stake and grazing placidly, was a big-boned, patient-looking horse.
+
+Across his back was strapped a small platform made of a cistern cover.
+This had been cushioned with a folded buggy robe.
+
+Alf Warren dove excitedly into a clump of bushes. He reappeared
+triumphantly holding aloft a big hoop. It was wound round and round with
+strips of woolen cloth which exuded an unmistakable and unpleasant odor
+of kerosene.
+
+"Say! it's going to be just like the circus picture on the side of the
+post office, isn't it?" chuckled little Tod Smith.
+
+Ned Wilier took down the fence bars and led the horse out into the road.
+
+Andy pulled off his coat and shoes. He stowed them alongside a rock near
+the fence. Then he produced some elastic bands and secured his trousers
+around the ankles.
+
+His eyes brightened and he forgot all his troubles for the time being,
+as he ran back a bit.
+
+"Out of the way there!" shouted Andy with glowing cheeks, posing for a
+forward dash.
+
+He made a quick, superb bound and landed lightly on the horse's back.
+
+Old Dobbin shied restively. Ned, at his nose, quieted him with a word.
+
+Andy, the centre of an admiring group, tested the impromptu platform. He
+accepted a short riding whip handed up to him by Alf Warren with a truly
+professional flourish. Andy stood easy and erect, one hand on his hip.
+All that seemed lacking was the sawdust ring and a tinselled garb.
+
+"Ready," announced Andy.
+
+All of the group except Ned Wilfer started down the road in the wake of
+Alf Warren. The latter carried the hoop in one hand, some matches in
+the other.
+
+The mob rounded the highway, purposely selected because it curved, and
+disappeared from view.
+
+"Everything all right, Andy?" inquired Ned, strutting about with quite a
+ringmaster-like air.
+
+"Yes, if the horse will go any."
+
+"Oh, he'll get up full speed, once started," assured Ned.
+
+It was fully five minutes before an expected signal reached them. From
+far around the bend in the road there suddenly echoed vivid shouts and
+whistlings.
+
+"Start him up," ordered Andy.
+
+Ned led the horse a few rods and got him to running. Then, dropping to
+the rear, he kept pace with the animal, slapping one flank and urging
+him up to greater speed.
+
+He fell behind, but kept on running, as Andy, guiding the horse by the
+long bridle reins, occasionally gave him a stimulating touch of the
+light whip he carried.
+
+Five hundred feet covered, old Dobbin seemed to enjoy the novelty of the
+occasion, and kept up a very fair gait.
+
+Rounding the curve in the road and looking a quarter-of-a-mile ahead,
+Andy could see his schoolmates gathered around a tree stump surmounted
+by Alf Warren, holding the hoop aloft.
+
+Just here, too, for the space of a mere minute Andy could view the
+schoolhouse through a break in the timber.
+
+A swift side glance showed the big scholar, Graham, lounging in the
+doorway.
+
+Just approaching him from the direction of the village was the old
+schoolmaster, Mr. Darrow.
+
+"He has been up to see Aunt Lavinia, that's the reason of the double
+recess," thought Andy, his heart sinking a trifle. Then, flinging care
+to the winds for the occasion, he uttered a ringing:
+
+"Hoop-la!"
+
+Andy felt that he must do justice to the expectations of his young
+friends.
+
+He swung outward on one foot in true circus ring fashion. He swayed back
+at the end of the bridles. He tipped thrillingly at the very edge of the
+cushioned platform. All the time by shouts and whip, he urged up old
+Dobbin to his best spurt of speed.
+
+At the schoolhouse door Mr. Darrow gazed at the astonishing spectacle
+with uplifted hands.
+
+"Shocking!" he groaned. "Graham, there goes the most incorrigible boy in
+Fairview."
+
+"Yes," nodded Graham with a quaint smile, as Andy Wildwood flashed out
+of sight past the break in the timber--"he certainly is going some."
+
+"He'll break his neck!"
+
+"I trust not."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+DISASTER
+
+
+Old Dobbin pricked up his ears and kept royally to his task as he seemed
+to enter into the excitement of the moment.
+
+Andy had practiced on the animal on several previous occasions. Lumps of
+sugar and apples had rewarded Dobbin at the end of the performances for
+his faithful services. He seemed now to remember this, as he galloped
+along towards the waiting group down the road.
+
+Sometimes Andy had made the horseback somersault successfully. Sometimes
+he had failed ignominiously and tumbled to the ground. Just now he felt
+no doubt of the result. The padded cushion cover was broad and steady.
+
+He kept the horse close to the inner edge of the road. The tree stump
+upon which Alf Warren stood just lined it.
+
+By holding the hoop extended straight out, the horse's body would pass
+directly under this.
+
+Nearer and nearer steed and rider approached the point of interest.
+
+The spectators gaped and squirmed, vastly excited, but silent now.
+
+About one hundred feet away from the tree stump, Andy shouted out the
+quick word:
+
+"Ready."
+
+At once Alf Warren drew the match in his free hand across his coat
+sleeve. It lighted. He applied the ignited splinter to the edge of
+the hoop.
+
+The oil-soaked covering took fire instantly. The blaze ran round the
+circle. The hoop burst into a wreath of light, darting flames.
+
+Andy fixed a calculating eye on hoop and holder.
+
+"Two inches lower," he ordered--"keep it firm."
+
+The horse seemed inclined to swerve at a sight of the fiery hoop. Andy
+soothed Dobbin by word and kept him steady with the bridle reins.
+
+Everything seemed working smoothly. Andy moved to the extreme rear edge
+of the platform and poised there.
+
+Five feet away from the hoop he dropped the riding whip. Then he flung
+the reins across the horse's neck.
+
+With nerve and precision Andy started a forward somersault at just the
+right moment.
+
+He felt a warm wave cross his face. As he made the complete circle he
+knew that something was wrong.
+
+"Ouch!" suddenly yelled out Alf.
+
+A spurt of flame had shot against his hand that held the short stick
+attached to the hoop.
+
+Alf let go the hoop and dropped it. As Andy came down, righted again on
+the platform, one foot struck the narrow edge of the hoop.
+
+He was in his stocking feet, and the contact cut the instep sharply. It
+threw Andy off his balance. He tried to right himself, but failed. He
+tipped sideways, and was forced to jump to the ground.
+
+The hoop fell forward against the horse's mane. With a wild neigh of
+terror and pain the animal leaped to one side, carrying away a section
+of rotten fence. The blazing hoop now dropped around its neck.
+
+A shout of dismay went up from the spectators. Alf, nursing his burned
+fingers, looked scared. Andy glanced sharply after the flying horse and
+spurted after it. At that moment the school bell rang out, and the crowd
+made a rush in the direction of the building. Alf Warren lagged behind.
+
+"Go ahead," directed Andy, "I'll catch Dobbin."
+
+Ned Wilfer at that moment dashed up to Andy's side.
+
+"I'll stay and help you," he panted.
+
+"Don't be tardy, don't get into trouble," said Andy.
+
+Dobbin was making straight across a meadow. The kerosene soaked rags had
+pretty well burned out. They smoked still, however, and in the breeze
+once in a while a tongue of flame would dart forth.
+
+Dobbin passed a haystack, then another. He was momentarily shut out from
+Andy's view on both occasions.
+
+At his second reappearance Andy noticed that the animal had got rid of
+the hoop. Dobbin now slackened his pace, snorted, and, laying down,
+rolled over and over in the stubble.
+
+The horse righted himself as Andy came up with him, breathless.
+
+"So, so, old fellow," soothed Andy. "Just singed the mane a little,
+that's all."
+
+He patted the animal's nose and seized the bridle to lead Dobbin back to
+the pasture from which he had started.
+
+"Oh, gracious!" exclaimed Andy, abruptly dropping the bridle quicker
+than he had seized it.
+
+Forty feet back on the course Dobbin had come, the second haystack was
+all ablaze.
+
+There the horse had thrown off the fire hoop, or it had burned through
+at some part and had dropped there.
+
+It had set the dry hay aflame. As Andy looked, it spread out into a
+fan-like blaze, enveloping one whole side of the stack.
+
+Andy was dumb with consternation. However, he was not the boy to face a
+calamity inactively.
+
+His quick eye saw that the stack was doomed. What troubled him more than
+that was the imminent danger to half-a-dozen other stacks nearly
+adjoining it.
+
+"All Farmer Dale's hay!" gasped the perturbed lad. "Fifty tons, if
+there's one. If all that goes, what shall I do?"
+
+Andy took in the whole situation with a vivid glance. Then he made a
+bee-line dash for a broken stack against which rested a large
+field rake.
+
+It was broad and had a very long handle. Andy ran with it towards the
+blazing heap of hay and set to work instantly.
+
+"This won't do," he breathed excitedly, as an effort to beat out the
+spreading flames only caused burning shreds to fill the air. These
+threatened to ignite the contiguous stacks.
+
+Once the first of these was started they would all go one after the
+other. They were out of the direct draught of the light breeze
+prevailing. What cinders arose went straight up high in the air. The
+main danger threatened from the stubble.
+
+Creeping into this from the base of the haystack in flames, little
+pathways of fire darted out like vicious serpents.
+
+Andy made for these with the rake. He beat at them and scraped the
+ground. He stamped with his stockinged feet and pulled up clumps of
+stubble with his hands.
+
+The trouble was that so many little fires started up at so many
+different spots. Finally, however, the ground was a mass of burned-out
+grass for twenty feet clear around the centre of the blaze.
+
+The haystack was sinking down a glowing mass, but now confined itself
+and past spreading out.
+
+Andy flung himself on the ground fairly exhausted. His hands and face
+were somewhat blistered, and he was wringing wet with perspiration.
+
+He looked pretty serious as he did "a sum out of school."
+
+"That stack held about two tons and a-half," he calculated. "I heard a
+farmer at the post-office say yesterday that he was getting eight
+dollars in the stack for hay. There's twenty dollars gone up in smoke.
+Where will I ever get twenty dollars?"
+
+Andy became more and more despondent the longer he thought of the dismal
+situation.
+
+He stirred himself to action. With the rake he heaped together the
+brittle filaments of burned hay.
+
+"It can't spread any now," he decided finally. "It's dying down to
+nothing. Now then, what's next?"
+
+Andy took a far look in all directions. The fire had burned so rapidly
+and clear in the crisp light air that it did not seem to have been
+observed in the village.
+
+Andy wondered, however, that some of the Dales had not discovered it. He
+stood gazing thoughtfully at the Dale homestead about a
+quarter-of-a-mile away.
+
+A great many impulsive, disheartening and also reckless projects ran
+through his mind.
+
+"It's an awful fix to be in," ruminated Andy with a sigh of real
+distress. "If ever it was up to a fellow to cut stick and run, it's up
+to Andy Wildwood at this minute. Expelled from school, burning up a
+man's haystack and then--Aunt Lavinia! The rest is bad enough, but when
+I think of her it sends the cold chills all over me. Ugh!"
+
+Andy looked for Dobbin. It was some time before he discovered the
+innocent partner of his recent disastrous escapade.
+
+The old horse was half-a-mile distant, placidly making along the roadway
+for home.
+
+Andy rubbed his head in distress and uncertainty. He had a hard problem
+to figure out. Suddenly his eyes snapped and he straightened up briskly.
+
+"I won't crawl," he declared. "'Toe the mark' is Aunt Lavinia's great
+motto. 'Face the music' is mine. I won't turn tail and play the sneak.
+I've destroyed some property. Well, the first honest thing to do is to
+try and make good. Here goes."
+
+Andy started for the road. He reached the spot where he had left his
+coat and shoes. Donning these he went to a little pool in the brush,
+washed his face and hands, and made a short cut for Farmer Dale's house.
+
+Andy's heart was beating pretty fast as he entered the farm yard, but he
+marched straight up to the front door.
+
+Andy knocked, first timidly, then louder.
+
+There was no response.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+A BUSINESS PROPOSITION
+
+
+"Nobody at home," said Andy to himself.
+
+He walked around the house to find all the windows closed and locked.
+
+"That's the reason no one came to the fire," he resumed. "There's
+somebody, though."
+
+Andy started in the direction of the barn. He had caught the sound of
+some one chopping or hammering there.
+
+He came upon a hired hand splitting some sawed hickory slabs to whittle
+down into skewers.
+
+"Mr. Dale's folks all away?" inquired Andy.
+
+"Reckon they are, youngster," answered the man.
+
+"Will they be gone long, do you think?"
+
+"Mr. Dale won't. He drove the family over to Centreville. The circus is
+there, you know."
+
+"Yes," said Andy--longingly.
+
+"Took them early, so they could look around town. They're going to stay
+all night with some relations, Mr. Dale isn't, though. He ought to be
+back by this time. He's due now. Was talking of carting a couple of
+loads of hay over to Gregson's this morning."
+
+Andy's heart sank at this. He did not tell the man about the fire.
+Backing away gloomily, he went out into the road again.
+
+Every point in the landscape suggested some section of his morning's
+misfortunes. Andy craned his neck as he took in a distant view of the
+old school-house.
+
+He made out a female figure approaching it. Andy recognized the green
+bombazine dress of Miss Lavinia Talcott. She carried a baggy umbrella in
+her hand. Andy from experience knew that its possession by the old maid
+was generally a sign that she was on the war-path.
+
+"She's hunting for me," thought Andy. "I suppose I've got to face the
+music some time, but I'll not do it just now, I've got some business to
+attend to, first."
+
+Andy hurried down the Centreville turnpike. He walked along briskly,
+more to get out of possible range of Miss Lavinia than with any other
+distinct motive in mind. Still, Andy had "business" in view. That burned
+down haystack haunted him. Somehow he must square himself with Mr. Dale,
+he said. He fancied he had found a way.
+
+Andy did not pause until he was fully a mile down the highway. He felt
+safe from interruption now, and sat down on an old log and mused in a
+dreamy, drifting sort of a way.
+
+The sound of approaching wagon wheels disturbed him in the midst of a
+depressing reverie.
+
+"It's Mr. Dale," said Andy, getting up from the log and viewing the
+approaching team. "I wanted to see you, Mr. Dale," he spoke aloud as the
+carry-all came abreast of him.
+
+"Oh, hello, you, Wildwood," spoke the farmer with a grin. "Playing
+hookey, eh?"
+
+"No, sir," answered Andy frankly. "I was expelled from school this
+morning."
+
+"Do tell me now!" said Dale. "Want a lift?"
+
+"No, sir," answered Andy, "I just wanted to take up a minute of your
+time. I'm sorry, Mr. Dale, I don't suppose you think any too much of me
+already, and when I tell you--"
+
+"Hey? Ha! ha!" chuckled Dale. "Think I'm sore on you because of that
+calf business? Not at all, not at all. Why, I got double price for the
+critter, see?"
+
+"There's something else," announced Andy seriously. "The truth is, Mr.
+Dale, I burned down one of your haystacks about an hour ago."
+
+"What! You burned one of my haystacks? Which one--which one?" demanded
+Dale, growing pale with excitement.
+
+"The little one to the north-east of the field," explained Andy. "I
+should think it held between two and three tons."
+
+Farmer Dale dropped the lines and jumped down into the road from the
+wagon, whip in hand. All his jubilant slyness deserted him. He began to
+get frightfully worked up over Andy's news.
+
+"Wait a minute," pleaded Andy. "Don't get excited till I explain. I
+managed to save the other stacks. It was all an accident, but I want to
+pay the damage. Yes, I'll pay you, Mr. Dale."
+
+"You'll have to, you bet on that!" snorted the farmer wrathfully. "I'll
+go to your aunt right off with the bill."
+
+"Don't do it, Mr. Dale," advised Andy. "She preaches lots about honesty
+and responsibility and all that, but she's mighty close when it comes to
+the dollars. She wouldn't pay you a cent, no, sir, but I will. That hay
+is worth about twenty dollars, I reckon, Mr. Dale?"
+
+"Well, yes, it is," nodded the farmer. "Good timothy is scarce, and that
+was a prime lot."
+
+"I've got no money, of course," went on Andy, "but I thought this:
+couldn't you give me some work to do and let me pay it out in that way?
+I'll do my level best to--"
+
+"Oh! that's your precious proposition, is it?" snarled Mr. Dale,
+switching the whip about furiously. "No, I couldn't. The hand I've got
+now is idle half the time. See here, Wildwood, arson is a pretty serious
+crime. You'd better square this thing some way. In fact you've got to do
+it, or there's going to be trouble."
+
+"I know what you mean," said Andy--"you'll have me arrested. You mustn't
+do that, Mr. Dale--I feel bad enough, I'm in a hard enough corner
+already. I want to do what's right, and I intend to. I owe you twenty
+dollars. Will you give me time to pay it in? Will you take my note--with
+interest, of course--for the amount?"
+
+"Will I--take your note--interest? ha! ha! oh, dear me! dear me!" fairly
+exploded Dale in a burst of uproarious laughter.
+
+"Secured," added Andy in a business-like tone.
+
+"Secured by what?" demanded Dale eagerly.
+
+"I can't tell you now. I will to-night, or to-morrow morning."
+
+"You don't mean old ball bats, or your mud scow in the creek, or that
+kind of trash?" inquired Dale suspiciously.
+
+"No, sir, I mean tangible security," declared Andy.
+
+"You don't seem to carry much of it around with you," suggested Dale
+bluntly, casting a sarcastic eye over Andy's well-worn clothes.
+
+"Perhaps not," admitted Andy, coloring up. "I can give you security,
+though. What I want to know is this: If I can place good security in the
+hands of a trusty person, will you give me--say--three months to pay you
+off in? If I don't, the person will sell the security and pay you
+in full."
+
+"Why don't you put the security in my hands?" asked the farmer shrewdly.
+
+"Because I have done some damage up at the schoolhouse. I want to pay
+for that, too. You will be satisfied with the security and the person
+holding it, Mr. Dale. I will let you know all about it before ten
+o'clock to-morrow morning."
+
+Farmer Dale surveyed Andy with a long, curious stare, whistling softly
+to himself. His hot temper was subdued, now that he saw a prospect of
+payment for the burned hay.
+
+"You talk straight off the reel, Wildwood," he said. "I believe you're
+honest. Go on with your little arrangement, and let's see how it pans
+out. I shan't make any move until after ten o'clock to-morrow morning."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Dale," said Andy. "I won't disappoint you."
+
+Andy started to move away from the spot.
+
+"Hold on," interrupted Dale. "Tell me how it happened."
+
+Andy gave an unbiased account of the morning's occurrences.
+
+"Ha! hum!" commented the farmer. "No end of scrapes because you're a
+lively lad and can't help it. See here, Wildwood, do you know what I
+would do if I were in your place?"
+
+"No, what's that, Mr. Dale?" asked Andy.
+
+"I'd join the show--yes, I would!" declared the farmer energetically. "I
+tell you I believe circus is born in you, and you can't help it. You
+don't have much of a life at home. You're not built for humdrum village
+life. Get out; grow into something you fancy. No need being a scamp
+because you're a rover. My brother was built your sort. They pinned him
+down trying to make a doctor of him, and he ran away. He turned up with
+a little fortune ten years later, a big-hearted, happy fellow. No one
+particularly knew it, but he'd been with a traveling minstrel show for
+those ten years. Now he's settled down, and I'd like to see a finer man
+than Zeb Dale."
+
+"Thank you," said Andy, "I'll think of what you say."
+
+Farmer Dale jogged on his way. Andy faced towards Centreville. It seemed
+as if something was pulling him along in that direction.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE CIRCUS
+
+
+At the first cross-roads a field wagon containing a farmer, his wife and
+half-a-dozen children whirled into Andy Wildwood's view. A merry
+juvenile chorus told Andy that they were bound for the circus.
+
+"Trace loose, mister," he called out as he noticed the trailing strap.
+
+"Whoa," ordered the driver, halting with a jolt, and Andy adjusted the
+faulty harness and smiled back cheerily at an eager little fellow in the
+wagon who inquired if he was going to the show, too.
+
+"Jump in, youngster, if ours is your way," invited the farmer.
+
+Andy promptly availed himself of the offer. He sat with his feet
+dangling over the tailboard. The farther he got from Fairview the less
+he thought of the manifold troubles and complications he was leaving
+behind him there.
+
+Andy did not intend to run away from home. He had business in view which
+demanded his presence in Fairview the next day. He was, however,
+resolved to go to Centreville. He would at least see the outside of the
+circus, and could put on the time until evening.
+
+It was only six miles from Fairview to Centreville, and they soon came
+in sight of the county seat.
+
+Andy caught more and more of the circus fever as they progressed. At
+every branch road a new string of vehicles joined the procession. They
+passed gay parties of ruralites on foot. Andy leaped down from the wagon
+with a "Thank you" to his host, at the first sight of the mammoth white
+tents over on the village common.
+
+This was the second day of the circus at Centreville. It was scheduled
+to remain one more day. Its coming was a great event for the town, and
+the place was crowded with pleasure-seekers.
+
+Andy reached the principal street just as the grand pageant went by. It
+was a spectacle that dazzled him. The music, the glitter, the pomp, the
+fair array of wild animals made him forget everything except that he was
+a boy enjoying a rare moment of existence.
+
+It was the inner life of the circus people, however, that attracted
+Andy. It was his great ambition to be one of them. He was not content to
+remain a spectator of the outside veneer of show life. He wanted to know
+something of its practical side.
+
+Andy did not dally around the ticket seller's booth, the side shows or
+the crowded main entrance of the show.
+
+Once, when a small circus had visited Fairview, he had gotten a free
+pass by carrying buckets of water to the cook's tent.
+
+He had now a vague hope that some such fortunate chance might turn up on
+this new occasion.
+
+Andy soon discovered, however, that the present layout was on a far
+different scale to the second-class show he had seen at Fairview.
+
+It was a city in itself. There were well-defined bounds as to the circus
+proper. Ropes strung along iron stakes driven into the ground kept
+curious visitors at a distance.
+
+The performers' tent, the horse tents, the cook's quarters and the
+sleeping space of the working hands were all guarded, and intruders
+warned to keep their distance.
+
+Everything was neat and clean, and a well-ordered system prevailed
+everywhere.
+
+The savory flavor of roasting meat made Andy desperately hungry. He saw
+a fat, aproned cook hastily gathering up some chips near a chopping
+block. Andy offered to split him some fresh wood, but received only an
+ungracious:
+
+"Get out! No trespassers allowed here."
+
+Andy wandered about for a long time. He greatly envied a lad about his
+own age who, adorned with a gilt-braided jacket, was walking a beautiful
+Arabian steed up and down.
+
+While he was staring at the circus boy, two popcorn boys connected with
+the show ran into him purposely and tripped him up. They went off with a
+laugh at his mishap. Andy concluded he was getting in the way as a
+gruff, grizzled old fellow with a bludgeon ran forward and yelled to him
+to make himself scarce.
+
+"I wish I could get into the show," murmured Andy "There seems no way to
+work it, though," he added disconsolately. "I wonder if they'd let me
+stay here? When that canvas flaps I can see right into the main tent."
+
+Andy was right near the canvassed passageway leading from the
+performers' tent to the main one.
+
+If no one disturbed him he could have occasional glimpses of what was
+going on inside, and that was better than nothing.
+
+Fate, however, was against him. He heard quick breathing, and turning
+saw the big watchman rapidly making for him, club uplifted.
+
+"Trying to get in under the canvas, eh?" roared the man.
+
+"Not I--I wouldn't steal anything, not even a sneak into the show,"
+declared Andy.
+
+He retreated promptly, but in doing so tripped over a guy rope and went
+flat.
+
+Andy got up, his mouth full of fine shavings, but grasping something his
+hand had come in contact with and had clutched in his fall.
+
+He ran out of range of the watchman, who brandished his stick at the lad
+threateningly. At a safe distance Andy inspected his find.
+
+"Only a handkerchief," he said, "and a rather mussy one at that. But
+there's something knotted in it. I wonder what it is?"
+
+It was a large dark-colored silk handkerchief. It had an odor of resin,
+and two of its corners were knotted.
+
+Untying one knot, Andy disclosed a mysterious device resembling two hard
+rubber shoe horns, joined in the centre by a concave piece of metal.
+
+He could not possibly imagine its use or value. Then Andy laughed
+outright. The other knot undone revealed a small rabbit's foot.
+
+"Not much of a find," he ruminated. "Queer kind of plunder, though.
+Wonder who owns it, and what that fandangle thing is?"
+
+Andy pocketed the find and was about to move away from the spot, when
+the flap of the performers' tent moved apart.
+
+A man came out, all arrayed in tights and spangles for the circus ring.
+He wore a loose robe over his show costume and big slippers on his feet.
+His hair was nicely combed and his face powdered up for the performance.
+
+He looked very anxious and excited. Andy at once saw that he was looking
+for something in great haste and suspense.
+
+The man walked all around outside of the performers' tent, eagerly
+scanning the ground. Then he enlarged the scope of his survey
+and search.
+
+"Hey, Marco!" sang out another man, sticking his head past the flap of
+the tent. "Time to get in line."
+
+"Wait a minute," retorted the other. "I've lost something, and I won't
+go on till I find it."
+
+The speaker looked positively distressed as he continued a disappointing
+search. A sudden idea struck Andy, and he drew the handkerchief and its
+belongings from his pocket.
+
+Just then the circus performer nearly ran against him. He looked up and
+made a forward jump. He seized the handkerchief and the two odd objects
+it contained with a fervent cry that astonished the bewildered Andy.
+
+"Give them to me," he exclaimed eagerly. "They're mine. Where did you
+find them? Boy, you've saved my life!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+CIRCUS TALK
+
+
+Andy knew that the circus actor's vehement statement was an
+exaggeration, still there was no doubting the fact that he was intensely
+pleased and grateful.
+
+"I found those things in the handkerchief over near the dressing tent,"
+explained Andy.
+
+"I must have dropped them there, or they got kicked out under the flap
+in hustling the baggage around," cried the man. "Here, kid."
+
+The speaker made a motion towards his side, as if reaching for a vest
+pocket.
+
+"I forgot," he laughed. "I have my ring togs on. Come along, I'll borrow
+some coin for you."
+
+"Oh, no," demurred Andy, "I don't want any pay."
+
+"Don't?" propounded the man in astonishment. "I want to do something for
+you. I'm the Man with the Iron Jaw, and that hard rubber device is what
+I hold in my mouth when I go up the rope, see?"
+
+"And that rabbit's foot?" insinuated Andy, guessing.
+
+"Hoodoo. Don't grin, kid. If you were in the profession you'd understand
+that a fellow values a charm that has carried him safe over Fridays,
+thirteenths, rotten trapezes and cyclones. We're a superstitious bunch,
+you know, and I'm no wiser than the rest. Why see here, of course you
+want to see the show, don't you?"
+
+"I just do," admitted Andy with alacrity--"if it can be arranged."
+
+"Come with me."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Andy readily followed after his gymnastic acquaintance. A word at the
+door flap of the performers' tent admitted them without challenge.
+
+Andy took a keen, interested look around. Near two stands holding silver
+starred boxes was a performer in costume, evidently the conjurer of the
+show. Beyond him, seated daintily on a large white horse, was a pretty
+woman of about thirty, waiting her call to the ring.
+
+A great-muscled fellow sat on a stool surrounded by enormous balls and
+dumb bells--the "Strong Man" of the circus.
+
+A trick elephant was being fed by its keeper at once side of the tent.
+Nearby was a young man dressed as a jockey, holding the chains leading
+to the collars of a dozen performing dogs.
+
+Andy had a good memory. He knew from her resemblance to the posters he
+had seen, that the lady on the white horse was Miss Stella Starr, "the
+dashing equestrienne."
+
+She seemed to be on good terms with everybody, particularly with Andy's
+new acquaintance.
+
+"Who is your friend, Marco?" she asked, as the man passed by her.
+
+He explained, with a great many excited gestures. Then he beckoned to
+Andy as the equestrienne smiled pleasantly at him.
+
+"You bunk right there, kid," said Marco, stowing Andy behind a pile of
+seat planks that lined the side of the canvassed passageway joining the
+performers' tent with the main one.
+
+Andy promptly climbed up on top of the heap of boards. The curtain that
+separated the two circus compartments was festooned at one side. Just
+beyond was the orchestra. Andy could look over their heads and past
+them, with a perfect view of the performing ring.
+
+He gave himself up so completely to the enjoyment of the grand privilege
+accorded him, that for one engrossing, bewildering hour he seemed in a
+dreamland of rare delight.
+
+Everything went smoothly and neatly. The various acts were new, and
+cleverly performed.
+
+When it came to Stella Starr's turn, Andy witnessed a second exhibition
+of the superstitious folly of these strange circus folk.
+
+The equestrienne sharply halted the man who led her horse forward for a
+dash into the ring.
+
+"Back him--instantly," she called out. "Right foot first over the dead
+line. I wouldn't start on a left foot _entree_ for the whole day's
+proceeds."
+
+The imperious mandate was obeyed, and Andy raptly witnessed some
+bareback riding that made his heart quicken and his eyes flash with
+pleasure and admiration.
+
+Miss Stella Starr had two acts. When she retired from the ring, kissing
+her little hands prettily to the applauding audience, the manager turned
+her horse again facing the curtain in the canvassed passageway.
+
+The equestrienne sank gracefully to a rest on the flank of the big white
+horse, patting him affectionately, while some hands began rolling great
+tubs into the ring.
+
+These were to form a pyramid, up one side of which and down the other
+the white horse was to pass.
+
+Suddenly, as Andy's interest was divided between the ring and the
+equestrienne, a sharp crack rang out. It was accompanied by a swishing,
+ominous, tearing sound.
+
+An uneasy murmur swayed the audience. The manager ran out into the ring,
+swiftly glanced at the centre pole, and drawing a whistle from his
+pocket gave three piercing blasts.
+
+"It's a wind storm," Andy heard some one remark.
+
+A second gust swayed the centre pole. The great spreads of canvas bulged
+and flapped. The audience arose in their seats.
+
+Andy saw the manager seize a great megaphone near the band stand. He
+shouted:
+
+"Preserve order. There is no danger. Keep your seats. It is only a
+passing gust of wind. Play! play!" he shouted frantically to the band.
+
+"Take care!" shouted the man, Marco, with a look through the outside
+flap, "she's coming again!"
+
+A sudden tumult fell on the air. Shrieks, yells, a great babel arose
+from the audience. The centre pole creaked and swayed dangerously. Then,
+with a sharp rip the canvas roof over Andy's head was wrenched from
+place and went sailing up into the air.
+
+A heavy wooden cross-piece running between two supports had been torn
+loose at one end. The rope securing it whipped about and struck Andy
+in the face.
+
+He dodged, and was about to leap to the ground, when a sharp cry from
+Stella Starr announced a new peril.
+
+The free end of the heavy cross piece was descending with the force of a
+driven sledge hammer. She was directly within range. Andy saw her
+danger, jumped erect, grabbed at the rope whipping about, and pulled it
+towards himself.
+
+As the equestrienne shrank to the neck of the trembling horse upon which
+she sat, the timber just grazed her spangled hair. It struck the ground
+and tore loose above. Its other end hit the pile of seat planks with
+a crash.
+
+Andy felt them topple. He tried to steady himself, to jump aside. He was
+caught in the tumble and went headlong to the sawdust, the planks
+falling on top of him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A WARM RECEPTION
+
+
+Andy Wildwood was knocked senseless. When he came back to consciousness
+he found himself lying on a mattress in a little space surrounded by
+canvas. It was one of the circus dressing rooms.
+
+He sniffed camphor, and one side of his head felt stiff and sore.
+Putting up his hand Andy discovered strips of sticking plaster there.
+
+"Was I hurt?" he asked, sitting up.
+
+"Circus doctor says not badly," promptly answered Marco, who stood by
+the mattress. "How is it, kid? No bones broken?"
+
+"Oh, no," answered Andy readily, getting to his feet. "Say, what
+happened? The wind storm--"
+
+"Gone over. It's sunshine outside now. A few hanks of thread will fix
+the rips. The show went on all right after the squall. But say, you're a
+daisy. That timber--oh, here she is to talk for herself."
+
+Miss Stella Starr put in an appearance just here. She was neatly dressed
+in street costume. Her eyes were very bright, and there was a grateful
+smile on her womanly face as she grasped both of Andy's hands.
+
+"You are a good boy," she said with enthusiasm. "Bring me a stool,
+Marco, I want to talk with him."
+
+Andy flushed with embarrassment, as the little lady went on to insist
+that but for his quick foresight and energy she might have missed her
+salary, lying in a hospital for many a long day. She was very anxious as
+to Andy's injuries, and looked greatly relieved to find them trifling.
+
+"Just a lump under the ear and a cut on one cheek," reported Andy
+indifferently. "They're worth having to see you ride, Miss."
+
+"There, Marco!" cried the equestrienne brightly, "that is the handsomest
+compliment I ever received."
+
+"The kid's a mascot," pronounced Marco in his heavy, earnest way. "He
+found my lost traps, and he maybe saved your life. What can we do for
+you, now?"
+
+Andy shook his head vaguely. His bright face clouded. The human sympathy
+of his new friends had warmed his heart. It chilled, as he thought of
+Fairview and what awaited him there, especially Aunt Lavinia.
+
+The quick witted equestrienne read his face like a book.
+
+"See here, boy," she said, laying her gloved hand winningly on Andy's
+sleeve, "what is your name?" and as Andy told her she added; "And what
+is your trouble?"
+
+"Do I look as if I had trouble?" inquired Andy with a forced smile.
+
+"Don't try to fool Mrs. Jones, Wildwood," advised Marco. "She's our
+keenest. Has a boy at school nearly as old as you, haven't you, Mary?"
+
+"Jones? Mary?" spoke Andy in some wonder. "I thought the lady's name was
+Stella Starr."
+
+"On the posters and in the ring, yes," laughed the equestrienne. "Come,
+Andy, make a clean breast of it. Have you gone circus-crazy, and run
+away from home?"
+
+"No ma'am, but I'd like to."
+
+"Oh, dear! I guess you boys are all alike," commented the equestrienne.
+"Why do you wish to leave home?"
+
+"It's a long story," said Andy, with a sigh.
+
+"Tell it, Wildwood," spoke Marco. "We will be glad to listen."
+
+"Yes, indeed," assented Stella Starr. "I am interested in you, Andy. You
+have been of great service to us. Let us help you, if we can."
+
+Andy told his story. Stella Starr laughed merrily at his mild escapades.
+Marco's big eyes opened widely as Andy made plain the fact that he was a
+very fair amateur acrobat.
+
+"Why, the kid is up to the trained average, if he can do all those
+things," he declared.
+
+Stella Starr studied Andy silently for a few minutes. Then she said:
+
+"Andy, I believe you are a good, truthful boy. I am sorry for you. You
+deserve a better home. I don't believe you will ever have it with
+your aunt."
+
+"Half-aunt," muttered Marco.
+
+"I do not consider you owe her any particular duty. You are not happy
+with her?"
+
+"No, ma'am, never," said Andy.
+
+"And I believe you would be happy with us."
+
+"Yes, I would," said Andy, with emotion. "I love the life here."
+
+"Very well, go back to Fairview just as you have planned. Arrange your
+affairs just as a clear conscience dictates to you. If fate leads you
+back here, come to me directly. I will speak to the manager and ask him
+to take you on with the show."
+
+Tears of longing and gratefulness came to Andy's eyes. He could not stop
+them.
+
+"You are good, kind people," he said in a muffled tone. "If I never see
+you again I shall never forget you."
+
+Stella Starr kissed Andy on the cheek in a motherly way. Marco followed
+the boy outside. He thumped him on the back with the farewell words,
+uttered with emphasis:
+
+"Cut for it, kid. Take my advice--it's good. You've got the making of a
+first-class ringer in you. Don't waste your ability in that humdrum town
+of yours."
+
+Andy started for Fairview in a daze. So much had happened since morning
+that he could recall it all only in a series of long mental pictures.
+The kindness and suggestions of his new-found friends kept him
+thinking deeply.
+
+It was nearly dusk when Andy entered Fairview. He steered clear of old
+comrades and familiar haunts. When he reached home it was by way of the
+rear fence.
+
+A light shone in the little kitchen. His aunt was bustling about in a
+brisk, jumpy way that told Andy she was full of excitement and
+bottled-up wrath.
+
+"Here goes, anyway," he said finally, vaulting the fence and reaching
+the woodshed.
+
+Andy took up a good armful of wood, marched right up to the back steps
+and through the open doorway. He placed his load behind the
+kitchen stove.
+
+"You graceless wretch!" were Miss Lavinia's first words.
+
+She had a cooking fork in her hand and with it she jabbed the air
+viciously.
+
+"Go up stairs instantly," she commanded next.
+
+"I'm not sleepy, and I'm hungry," said Andy respectfully enough, but
+firmly.
+
+He walked over to the set table and picked up two biscuits from a plate.
+
+"Put those down, you put those down!" screamed Miss Lavinia. "Will you
+mind me?"
+
+Andy pocketed the biscuits. He was taking wise precautions in view of
+past experiences with his termagant relative.
+
+The boy stood his ground, and his aunt stamped her foot. Then she
+reached behind the stove and took up a stick used as a carpet beater.
+Armed with this she advanced threateningly upon Andy.
+
+"Don't strike me, Aunt Lavinia," said Andy quickly. "I am getting too
+big for that. I won't stand it!"
+
+"You scamp! you disgrace!" shouted his irate relative, still advancing
+upon him.
+
+She beat at Andy, who snatched the stick from her hand, broke it in two
+and threw it out through the open doorway.
+
+"I will go to my room if you insist upon it," said Andy now. "I don't
+see the need of treating me like a dog, though."
+
+"Don't you?" screamed Miss Lavinia. "Oh, you precious rascal! Here I've
+worked my fingers off to keep you respectable, and you go and disgrace
+me shamefully. Go to your room, Andy Wildwood. We'll attend to this
+matter of yours in the morning."
+
+"What matter?" demanded Andy.
+
+"Never mind, now. Do as I say. There's a rod in pickle for you, young
+man, that may bring you to your senses this time."
+
+Andy preferred loneliness up stairs to nagging down stairs. He left the
+kitchen and reached his own room. He lit a candle and sat down on
+the bed.
+
+There was a sharp click at the door almost immediately. His aunt had
+stolen silently up the stairs and had bolted him in.
+
+"As if that would keep me if I wanted to get out very bad!" thought
+Andy, with a glance at the frail door. "Oh, but I'm tired of all this!
+I've made up my mind. I shall leave Fairview."
+
+Andy went to a shelf, felt in an old vase, and took out a key.
+
+He fitted it to the lower drawer of the bureau in the room. It was full
+of old clothes and papers that had belonged to his father.
+
+Finally Andy unearthed a little wooden box, and lifted it to the light.
+It held a lot of trinkets, and from among them Andy selected a large
+silver watch and chain. He also took out a small box. It was made of
+some very dark smooth wood, and its corners and center were decorated
+with carved pieces of gold and mother of pearl.
+
+"The watch and chain are solid silver," murmured Andy. "The box was
+given to father by his father. It is made of some rare wood that grows
+in the South Sea islands. The gold on it is quite thick. I am sure the
+bare metal on those things is worth more than thirty dollars."
+
+Andy carefully stowed the watch and little box in an inner pocket. Then
+he lay down on the bed to think, but without removing any of
+his clothing.
+
+He silently munched the biscuits. His face cleared as reflection led to
+determination. Andy planned to leave the house as soon as it was closed
+up for the night and Aunt Lavinia was asleep.
+
+"I can't stand it," he decided. "She says I'm a burden to her. I've got
+a show to enjoy myself and maybe make some money. Yes, it's Centreville
+and the circus by morning."
+
+Andy was more tired out than he had fancied. He fell asleep. As he woke
+up, he discovered that heavy footsteps tramping up the stairs had
+aroused him.
+
+He had caught the echo of lighter feet. There was rustling in the narrow
+entry outside.
+
+Andy sprang up and listened intently.
+
+"Aunt Lavinia and some one with her," he reflected. "I wonder who it can
+be?"
+
+Just then a gruff voice spoke out:
+
+"Is the boy in that room, Miss Lavinia?"
+
+"Yes," said Andy's aunt.
+
+"Then have him out, and let's have this unpleasant duty over and done
+with."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+"COASTING"
+
+
+The key turned in the lock. Andy's candle had remained lighted. As the
+door was pushed open Andy saw a big portly man standing behind his aunt.
+
+"Put on your clothes, Andy Wildwood," began Miss Lavinia.
+
+"I've got them on," answered Andy. "What do you want?"
+
+"Ask me that," broke in the man, stepping into view. "Sorry, Andy, but
+it's me that wants you. You know who I am."
+
+"Yes," nodded Andy, staring hard.
+
+He recognized the speaker as Dan Wagner, the village constable.
+Instantly the truth flashed over Andy. He turned to his aunt with a
+pale, stern face.
+
+"Are you going to let this man take me to jail?" he demanded.
+
+"Yes, I am," snapped Miss Lavinia. "You've gone just a little too far
+this time, Andy Wildwood."
+
+"What have I done that's so bad?" inquired Andy indignantly. "What is
+the charge against me?"
+
+"That's so, Miss Lavinia," observed the constable with a laugh. "There's
+got to be a specific charge, as I told you."
+
+"Charge!" sniffed Miss Lavinia scornfully. "I'll make a dozen of them.
+He's a bad, disobedient boy--"
+
+"When did I ever disobey you?" interrupted Andy, calmly keeping his
+temper.
+
+"Oh, you! He's got himself expelled from school."
+
+"That's no crime, 'cordin' to the statoots," declared the constable.
+
+"I don't care!" cried the angry spinster. "My duty is to keep this boy
+from going to ruin. You do yours. I explained it all to the judge. He
+said that if I, as his guardian, swore Andy was an incorrigible,
+unmanageable boy, he would send him to the parental school at Byron till
+he was reformed."
+
+Andy grew white to the lips. He fixed such a glance on his aunt that she
+quailed.
+
+"Shame on you!" he burst forth. "You my guardian! What did you ever
+guard for me, except too little clothes and victuals? I'm never out of
+the house after dark. I never refuse to do your hardest work. I even
+scrub for you. Well, I won't any longer. I have made up my mind to
+go away."
+
+"You hear that? you hear that?" cried Miss Lavinia. "He's going to run
+away from home!"
+
+"Home!" retorted Andy scornfully. "A fine home this has been for
+me--snapped at, found fault with, treated like a charity pauper. Do your
+duty, Mr. Wagner. But I warn you that no law can send me to the reform
+school. This woman is not my legal guardian. She is not rightfully even
+a relative. I have friends in Fairview, I tell you, and they won't see
+me wronged. I wonder what my poor dead father would say to you for
+all this?"
+
+Miss Lavinia gave a shriek. She fell into a chair and kicked her heels
+on the floor and went into hysterics.
+
+The constable looked in a friendly way at Andy. He liked the lad's pluck
+and independence. He recalled, too, how Andy had once led him to a quiet
+haystack, where he had slept himself sober instead of risking his
+position and making a public show of himself on the streets of Fairview.
+
+"See here, Miss Lavinia," he spoke, "I don't fancy treating Andy like a
+criminal. If I take him with me now I'll have to lock him up with two
+chicken thieves and a tramp. They're no good company for a
+homebred boy."
+
+"He deserves a lesson," declared Miss Lavinia. "He shall have it, too!"
+
+"Let him stay here till morning, then I'll come after him."
+
+"He won't be here. Didn't you hear him say he was going to run away from
+home?"
+
+"Haven't you got some safe place I can lock him up in?" suggested
+Wagner. "I've got to make you safe and sound, you know," observed the
+officer quite apologetically to Andy.
+
+"Yes, there is," reported Miss Lavinia after brief thought. "You wait a
+minute."
+
+She went away and returned with a bunch of keys. The constable beckoned
+to Andy to follow her, and he closed in behind.
+
+A steep, narrow staircase led to an attic room at the extreme rear of
+the house. This, as Andy knew, was his aunt's strong room.
+
+It had a heavy door secured by a padlock, and only one window. As Miss
+Lavinia unlocked the door and the candle illuminated the interior of the
+apartment, the constable observed grimly:
+
+"I reckon this will keep him safe and sound."
+
+Andy said nothing. He had made up his mind what he would do, and
+considered further talk useless.
+
+The apartment was littered up with chests, barrels and old furniture. In
+one corner was a pile of carpets. Andy walked silently over to these,
+threw himself down, and found himself in darkness as the door was again
+stoutly padlocked on the outside.
+
+"If anybody cared for me here it might be different," he observed. "As
+they don't, I must make friends for myself."
+
+In about half an hour Andy went to the window, It was a small one-pane
+sash. Looking out, he could trace the reflection from a light in his
+aunt's room on the shrubbery.
+
+Finally this light was extinguished. Andy waited a full hour. He heard
+the town bell strike twelve.
+
+The lad took out his pocket knife, opened its big blade, and in a few
+minutes had pried off the strip lining the sash. He removed the pane and
+set it noiselessly on the floor.
+
+As he stuck his head out through the aperture Andy looked calculating
+and serious.
+
+It was fully thirty feet to the ground, and no friendly projection
+offered help in a descent.
+
+It was furthermore a question if he could even squeeze through the
+window space.
+
+Andy had nothing to make a rope of. The old pieces of carpet could not
+be utilized in any way. If he could force his body through the window
+head first, it was a dive to go feet first on a dangerous drop.
+
+Andy investigated the aperture, experimented, took in the situation in
+all its various phases. Finally he decided what he would do.
+
+He had unearthed a long ironing board from a corner of the room. He
+pulled a heavy dresser up to the window, and opened one of its drawers a
+few inches.
+
+By slanting the ironing board, he managed to get its broad end out
+through the window. Then he dropped it flat, with its narrow end held
+firmly under the projecting drawer.
+
+Andy got flat on the board, squirmed along it, and just managed to
+squeeze through the window space.
+
+At the end of five minutes he found himself extended outside on the
+board. A touch might throw it out of position and drop him like a shot.
+Very carefully he arose to his feet and backed against the clapboards of
+the house.
+
+Andy felt sideways and up over his head. He soon located what he knew to
+be there--two lightning rod staples. The rod itself had rusted away. The
+staples had been used to hold up a vine. This drew bugs, Miss Lavinia
+declared, and had been torn down.
+
+Andy hooked his finger around one of the staples. He got one foot on the
+window sill clear of the board. The other foot he lifted in the air.
+
+Stooping and getting a hold on the side of the ironing board, Andy
+gently slid it out from its holding place and upright.
+
+He brought it and himself erect. Moving up his hand, he transferred its
+grasp to the second iron staple higher up the side of the house.
+
+Now Andy rested the board on his toes. He clasped it like a shield
+against his body, its broad end nearest his face.
+
+Beyond its edge he took a keen glance. The moon shone brightly. The
+nearest object it showed was a high, broad-branched thorn apple tree.
+
+It stood about twelve feet from the house, and its top was perhaps as
+far below his foothold.
+
+"It's my only show," said Andy. "I've got to coast it, or get all torn
+up."
+
+He let go his hold of the staple. Instantly he had a hand firmly
+grasping either side of the ironing board Andy dropped to a
+past-centre slant.
+
+Giving his feet a prodigious push against the window sill, he shot
+forward and downward.
+
+For an instant Andy sailed through the air. He feared he might dive
+short of the tree. He hoped he would land flat.
+
+The latter by luck or his own precision he did. The board struck the
+tree top.
+
+There was a sliding swish, a vast cracking of branches.
+
+His weight dropped one end of the ironing board. It landed against a big
+branch, and Andy found himself safely anchored in the tree top.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+GOOD-BYE TO FAIRVIEW
+
+
+Looking back at the attic window, Andy Wildwood wondered how he had ever
+made the successful descent.
+
+Any boy lacking his sense of athletic precision would have scored a
+dangerous fall. Andy now slowly worked his way down thrown the branches
+of the tree. He got a few sharp scratches, but was vastly pleased with
+himself when he landed safely on the ground.
+
+"Good-bye to Fairview!" he spoke with a stimulating sense of freedom,
+waving his hand across the scene in general. "I may not come back rich
+or famous, but I shall have seen the world."
+
+Andy did not turn in the direction of Centreville. He felt of the pocket
+containing his father's watch and the little box, and then headed
+straight for Millville.
+
+That was where the big scholar, Graham, lived. It was five miles away.
+Graham boarded with the farmer who had bought Mr. Dale's cow and calf.
+
+Andy had kept Graham in mind ever since he had agreed to pay for burning
+up the hay stack. It was about two o'clock when he reached his
+destination.
+
+The night he and his school companions had restored the little calf to
+its frantic mother, Andy had seen Graham in the window of his room in
+the old farmhouse.
+
+Andy now looked up at the window of this room. It was open. A trellis
+ran up its side. The house was dark and silent. He scaled the trellis
+and rested a hand on the window sill.
+
+"Mr. Graham," he called out softly. Then he repeated the call several
+times, gradually raising his voice.
+
+There was a rustle of bed clothes, a droning mumble. Andy called again.
+
+"What is it? who is there?" questioned Graham's tones.
+
+"It's me," said Andy. "Don't be disturbed. Just listen for a minute,
+will you?"
+
+"Eh! Is that Andy Wildwood?" exclaimed Graham.
+
+"Yes," answered Andy.
+
+A white-robbed figure came to the window and sat down in a chair there.
+Graham rubbed his eyes and stared wonderingly at the strange midnight
+visitor clinging to the window sill.
+
+"Why, what's the trouble, Andy?" he questioned in a tone of surprise.
+
+"It's trouble, yes, you can make sure of that," responded Andy with a
+little nervous catch in his voice. "I'm having nothing but trouble,
+lately. There's so much of it around here that I've concluded to get
+out of it."
+
+"How get out of it?" demanded Graham.
+
+"I've left home--for good. I want to leave a clear record behind me, so
+I've come to you. You don't mind my disturbing you this way, I hope?"
+
+"No--no, indeed," answered Graham promptly. "Run away, eh?"
+
+"Yes, I've got to. Aunt Lavinia has had me arrested; she wants to send
+me to reform school."
+
+"Why," exclaimed Graham indignantly, "that's a burning shame!"
+
+"I thought so. The constable was around last evening. He locked me in
+the attic for safe keeping, but I got free, and here I am, on my way
+to--to--on my way to find work."
+
+"Do you mean circus work?" guessed Graham quickly.
+
+"Why, yes, I do. I don't mind telling you, for you have always been a
+friend to us smaller boys."
+
+"Always will be, Andy."
+
+"I believe that. We all like you. It's this way: I think I have a chance
+to join a show, and I want to, bad. I shall be paid something. When I
+am, I want to send it to you."
+
+"To me? What for, Andy?"
+
+"Well, I smashed the desk and pulled down the chimney at the
+schoolhouse, you know."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I calculate that damage amounts to about ten dollars. I burned down a
+haystack belonging to farmer Dale yesterday. Twenty dollars, he says.
+I've agreed to pay him, and I want you to see the school trustees to-day
+and explain to them that I'll pay for the desk and the chimney. I told
+Mr. Dale I would give him my note. I can't just now, but I will mail
+one, signed, to you."
+
+"Will Dale accept it?" asked Graham.
+
+"Yes, if I secure it."
+
+"Secure it, how?"
+
+"That's why I came to see you," explained Andy. "I've got in my pocket a
+silver watch and chain and a box ornamented with gold. They were left to
+me by my father. I want you to take the articles. Explain to Mr. Dale
+and the school trustees about them--that you are to hold them for the
+benefit of my creditors, see?"
+
+"That's quite business-like, Andy."
+
+"I will certainly send you some money. As soon as I do, divide it up
+with the school and Mr. Dale. I will keep you posted as to my
+whereabouts, but keep it a secret. Will you do all this for me?"
+
+"Gladly, Andy."
+
+"Here are the things," continued Andy, handing over the contents of his
+pocket. "And thank you."
+
+"Don't mention it. You're all right, Andy," declared Graham in a warm,
+friendly way. "I shan't encourage you to run away from home, but I won't
+try to stop you. Have you got any money?"
+
+"Why, no," answered Andy.
+
+"You wait a minute, then."
+
+Graham took the watch and the box and retired from the window. As he
+returned he pressed a folded piece of paper between Andy's fingers.
+
+"Take that," he said.
+
+"What is it?" asked Andy.
+
+"It's a five-dollar bill."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Graham--"
+
+"No nonsense, Andy. I know from practical experience what it is to start
+out in the world penniless. I have the money saved up for two years'
+board and schooling. I won't miss that little amount until way along
+next fall. You will have paid it back long before that, I'll warrant."
+
+"You bet I will--and you're awful good to me!" declared Andy heartily.
+
+"Just one more word, Andy," resumed Graham earnestly. "If you are
+determined to be a circus tumbler, be the best or nothing. If you like
+enjoyment, made it good, clean fun. I'm not afraid of you. I'm only
+giving the advice of a fellow older than you, who has learned that it
+pays to be right and do right in the long run."
+
+When Andy once more stood in the road with his royal friend's "Good
+luck, old fellow!" still echoing in his ears, his heart was very full.
+
+"It's mighty good of him," murmured Andy, safely stowing away the
+five-dollar bill. "I'll deserve his good opinion, see if I don't!"
+
+Andy walked on a mile or two further. Climbing a fence he made a snug
+bed alongside a convenient haystack.
+
+The sun was shining brightly when the lad awoke, refreshed and full of
+spirit and hope. He somehow felt as though he was beginning the most
+eventful day of his life.
+
+Andy turned his face in the direction of Centreville. He had no idea of
+going direct there, however, that day.
+
+He did not know how many people from Fairview might have seen him there
+the day previous. He did know that if Aunt Lavinia was determined to
+pursue him, the first thing she would think of was his circus
+predilections.
+
+Andy planned cautiously and with wisdom. From watching the circus
+posters he knew it's route. Centreville was in another county from
+Fairview. But Clifton, the next point of exhibition, was in
+another state.
+
+"That suits me," he murmured.
+
+Andy had an idea that once safely over the state line the law could not
+reach him so readily as on home territory.
+
+He knew the neighboring towns pretty fairly, and he fixed on Clifton as
+his destination. Clifton was about eight miles from Centreville.
+
+Andy decided he would go there and put in the time until next morning.
+
+At midnight the show would pull up stakes at Centreville. He would be on
+hand to welcome its arrival at Clifton.
+
+"Then I will see Miss Starr and Mr. Marco," he thought. "If the circus
+manager will only take me on, I'll fall into great luck."
+
+Andy got to Clifton about noon. He changed the five-dollar bill, buying
+a cheap but big dinner, for he was nearly famished.
+
+He learned where the circus was to exhibit, and went to the spot. Some
+workers were already there, digging trenches, distributing sawdust
+and the like.
+
+Andy volunteered to help them. It would be good practice in the way of
+experience, he told himself. Until four o'clock in the afternoon he was
+quite busy about the place.
+
+He had heard so much circus talk during his free labors that his mind
+was more full of the show than ever.
+
+Andy had heard one of the workers describe to a new hand all the
+excitement, bustle and novelty attending a jump from one town
+to another.
+
+He strolled about the place but grew restive. Just before dusk he bought
+some crackers and cheese, filled his pockets with the eatables, and
+started down the road leading towards Centreville.
+
+Andy met an advance guard of the circus about two miles out of Clifton.
+Some wagons carried the cooking camp outfit. A little farther on he was
+met by some menagerie wagons.
+
+"They'll come in sections," ruminated Andy.
+
+"The big tent people won't make a start till after the evening
+performance. I won't risk going any farther. There's an open barn near
+the road. I'll take a little snooze, and wake up in time to join the
+procession of big loads."
+
+Andy secured his little cash reserve in a marble bag. He ate some lunch
+and made for the open structure he had observed.
+
+It was an old doorless barn near a hay press. A great many bales were
+stack up at one side. Climbing among these Andy found a cozy boxed in
+space, carried some loose hay to it, and composed himself for sleep.
+
+"Twenty cents a day is pretty economical living," he reflected, as he
+studied the stars visible through a chink in the roof. "I wonder what
+the circus people pay a beginner?"
+
+Wondering about this, and a variety of similar themes, Andy dozed, but
+was suddenly awakened by the sharp snap of a match and a brief flare.
+
+He got up and peered over the edge of the bales of hay that enclosed his
+resting place.
+
+The moon was shining brightly. Outlined at the open doorway of the barn
+was a man. He leaned against a post, had just lit a cigar, and was
+looking intently down the road in the direction of Centreville.
+
+Some wagons rattled by and the man drew inside the barn out of view.
+Andy made out that he was well-dressed and very active and nervous in
+his manner.
+
+"That man is waiting for some one," decided Andy, getting
+interested--"yes, and he belongs to the show, I'll bet."
+
+Andy reasoned this out from the facility with which the man hummed out a
+tune he had heard the circus orchestra play.
+
+The man paced restively to and fro. He went out into the road and looked
+far down it. He returned to the barn and resumed his impatient pacing
+to and fro.
+
+Nearly an hour went by in this fashion. Andy began to consider that he
+had become curious without much reason. He was about to drop back again
+to his cozy bed when he heard the man utter an exclamation of
+satisfaction.
+
+He rubbed his hands and braced up, and as a new figure turned from the
+road spoke in a cautious but distinct tone.
+
+"That you, Murdock?"
+
+"It's me, sure enough, Daley," came the reply.
+
+"S--sh--don't use my name here. You know--"
+
+"All right. No one likely to hear us in this lonely spot, though," spoke
+the newcomer addressed as Murdock.
+
+"Well, what have you to report?" questioned Daley eagerly.
+
+"It's all right."
+
+"You've fixed it?"
+
+"Snug and sure. The show will have a big sensation to-night not down on
+the bills."
+
+The listening Andy heard the man called Daley utter a gratified chuckle.
+
+"Good," he said.
+
+"And there'll be a vacancy on the Benares Brothers' team to-morrow,"
+added Daley, "so give me the twenty dollars."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+A FIRST APPEARANCE
+
+
+Andy pricked up his ears with a good deal of animation. The jubilant
+statement of the fellow called Murdock did not sound honest.
+
+"I'm taking your word for it," spoke Daley.
+
+He had drawn something from his pocket, evidently a roll of bills, for
+as he extended it Murdock said eagerly.
+
+"Twenty dollars?"
+
+"Yes. Tell me how you fixed it."
+
+"Why," answered Murdock with a cruel laugh, "you was laid off as one of
+the Benares Brothers up at the show on account of drinking, wasn't you?"
+
+Daley moodily nodded his head.
+
+"They put on Thacher in your place. You and him are probably the only
+two men in the profession who can do the somersault trapeze act with old
+Benares. That puts you out of a job, for you're no good single."
+
+"I guess that is right. Thacher takes the bread out of my mouth, sink
+him!"
+
+"You say, 'twenty dollars' if I fix Thacher so he can't act well,"
+declared Murdock in a cold-blooded way that made Andy shiver, "he won't
+act for a spell after to-night, I'm thinking."
+
+"Come to the point--what did you do?"
+
+"Why, after doing their regular stunt on a separate trapeze, Thatcher
+somersaults and catches a bar swing from centre. He hangs by his knees
+and Benares swings from aloft and catches his hands in his dive for
+life. Well, the minute Thacher lands on the centre trapeze to-night down
+he goes forty feet head-first. It's broken limbs or nothing, for I cut
+the bar free first thing after the afternoon performance. It's held in
+place now by only two little pieces of thread that a child's finger
+could break."
+
+"Um!" remarked Daley. "I guess I'll cut for it. They think I'm a hundred
+miles away. It mustn't be known that I was this near the circus or
+they'd suspect me. I presume they'll be wiring for me to come back now."
+
+"Oh, sure. They won't suspect me, either. I sneaked in the big tent and
+fixed the trapeze when no one was about. See here, Daley, if you do get
+your job back you'd ought to give me an extra ten."
+
+"I'll see about it," said Daley.
+
+The two worthies walked from the place. Andy watched them cross fields
+away from the main road and away from both Clifton and Centreville.
+
+Little thrills of horror ran all over the boy. This was his first view
+of the dark, plotful side of circus life, and it appalled him.
+
+"Why," he exclaimed, "it may be murder. Oh, those wretches! The Benares
+Brothers. I saw them yesterday. I remember the dive for life. I had to
+hold my breath when one man made that somersault, away up at the top of
+the tent. It was more than thrilling when he caught the other trapeze
+with his knees. It was curdling when his partner made his dive for life.
+One second over time, one miss of an inch, and it looked sure death. And
+now that trapeze has been tampered with, and--"
+
+The excited Andy did not finish the sentence. He forgot all his own
+plans and the possible danger of arrest at Centreville.
+
+He jumped down from the hay bales and dashed out of the barn. Andy sped
+along the highway circus-ward at the top of his speed.
+
+The situation had appealed to him in a flash. The two plotters had
+talked in plain English. There was no misunderstanding their motives
+and acts.
+
+Andy had a vivid picture in his mind--the big circus tent four miles
+away. He could recall just where the Benares Brothers act came on the
+programme.
+
+"It was about ninth down the list yesterday afternoon," he mused,
+softly. "They begin the show about eight o'clock. It's now about nine. I
+calculate the Benares Brothers come on this evening at about a quarter
+to ten. Four miles. I can run that in half an hour. Yes, I shall be
+in time."
+
+Andy pressed his arms to his sides, took breath to conserve his staying
+powers, and maintained a steady, telling pace.
+
+The lights of Centreville began to show nearer. He heard a town bell
+strike the half-hour as he came in sight of the grounds and the
+illuminated big tent of the show.
+
+The band inside was blaring away. The side shows were not doing much
+business. Some were getting ready for the removal. There were not many
+people around the main entrance. Andy, quite breathless, rushed up to
+the ticket taker there.
+
+"I want to go in for just a minute," he said--"I must see the manager."
+
+"Cut for it--no gags go here," retorted the man rudely.
+
+"It's pretty important. Here," began Andy. Then he paused in dismay. "Oh
+dear!" he spoke to himself, "I never put on my coat, that I used as a
+pillow back in that barn."
+
+In the hurry and excitement of the occasion Andy had left the coat among
+the hay bales. Just before arranging his bed he had stowed the marble
+bag containing the balance of Graham's five dollars in a pocket of
+the garment.
+
+He could not therefore pay his fare into the show. Only for an instant,
+however, was Andy daunted.
+
+He suddenly realized that he could get more promptly to the manager or
+the ringmaster from the rear.
+
+He ran around the big white mountain of canvas till he reached the
+performers' tent. Patrolling outside of it was a club-armed watchman.
+
+"Please let me in," said Andy hurriedly. "I want to see the manager,
+quick."
+
+"Yes, they all do. G'wan! Games don't go here."
+
+"No, no, I'm not trying to dead-head it," cried Andy. "Please call Mr.
+Marco or Miss Starr. They know me--"
+
+"G'wan, I tell you. I'm too old a bird to get caught by chaff.
+Get--now."
+
+The watchman struck Andy a sharp rap over the shoulders. Andy was in
+desperation. He was started to run around to some other of the minor
+tents, when a shifting slit in the canvas gave him a momentary view of
+the interior of the big circus tent.
+
+"Oh," cried Andy, wringing his hands, "the very act is on--the Benares
+Brothers! I must act at once!"
+
+Andy made a rush, intent on getting under the canvas at all hazards. He
+checked himself. If he succeeded in eluding the watchman outside, he
+would have difficulty in getting to the manager. He might be captured
+inside at once. He stood staring at the tent top in extreme anxiety
+and suspense.
+
+Shadows aloft enlightened him as to-what was going on. The Benares
+Brothers were mounting aloft. He made them out bowing gracefully, pulled
+up on the toe coils. He saw their outlines, trapeze-seated. The
+orchestra struck up a new tune. The act was about to commence.
+
+"I must stop them--I will warn them!" panted Andy with resolution. "If I
+got to the manager he might not understand me or believe me. It might be
+too late--there is not a minute to spare."
+
+Andy was quivering with excitement, his eyes flashing, his face flushed.
+
+He ran towards a guy rope, sprang up, caught at it, and hand over hand
+rapidly ascended it.
+
+Where it tapped the lower dip of the upper canvas, he transferred his
+grasp.
+
+A seam was here, held together by hook and ring clear to the gap at the
+centre pole. This seam, Andy discerned, ran right over to the trapezes.
+
+Andy scaled the course of the seam with the agility of a monkey, hooking
+the rings with his fingers and pulling himself up. The canvas quivered,
+shook and gave, but he did not heed that.
+
+He came to the open gap around the centre pole, seized the bound edge of
+the canvas, and gazed down.
+
+Ten feet across was old Benares, just getting ready for some evolutions.
+Directly under Andy was the trapeze holding the man he supposed to be
+Thacher. Over his head swung a smaller trapeze.
+
+Andy lay flat along the sloping canvas and stuck his head further down.
+
+"Mr. Thacher! Mr. Thacher!" he shouted.
+
+"Eh, why, hello! Who are you?"
+
+In wonderment the trapezist gazed up at the earnest, agitated face
+gazing down at him.
+
+At that juncture there was an ominous rip. Andy's weight it seemed had
+pressed too forcibly down upon a rotted section of the canvas.
+
+A strip about a foot wide tore free, binding and all, from the edge
+nearest the centre pole. It split six feet sheer. Andy's feet went over
+his head, but he kept a tight grip on the end of the strip.
+
+Dangling in mid air sixty feet above the saw-dust ring, Andy swung in
+space dizzy-headed, his first appearance before the circus public.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+SAWDUST AND SPANGLES
+
+
+Andy stared down at a sea of faces. They seemed far away. The circus
+manager had stepped briskly out into the ring.
+
+In great wonderment he stood gazing aloft. The audience swayed, and a
+general murmur filled the air. Many pointed upwards. Some arose from
+their seats, craning their necks in excitement.
+
+The orchestra dropped the music to low, undecided notes. Puzzled
+spectators wondered if the strange appearance above was part of some new
+novelty change in the programme.
+
+Andy clung to the dangling strip of canvas for dear life. The trapezist,
+Thacher, stared at him in profound astonishment. He was about to speak,
+to demand an explanation, when there was a second ripping sound.
+
+"Look out!" cried Thacher sharply.
+
+Andy saw what was happening. The canvas strip that had torn free
+lengthwise was now splitting its breadth.
+
+In another moment a mere filament of cloth would hold Andy suspended. He
+must act, and act quickly, or take a plunge sixty feet down.
+
+Andy did not lose his presence of mind. Just the same as if he was on
+the rafters of the old barn at home, or practicing on a rope strung from
+two high tree tops, as had been many a time the case, he calculated his
+chances and set his skill at work.
+
+He ventured a brief swing on the frail strip of canvas. As it finally
+tore free in his hand, Andy dropped it. He had got his momentum,
+however. It was to swing sideways and down. The next instant Andy was at
+the side of Thacher. One hand caught and held to a rope of the trapeze.
+There Andy anchored, resting one knee on the edge of the performing bar.
+
+"You're a good one!" muttered the trapezist in wonder. "Don't get
+rattled, now."
+
+"Not while I've got my grip. Say," projected Andy, "I'm sorry to
+interrupt the performance, but it's a matter of life or death."
+
+"Eh?" uttered Thacher in a puzzled way. "What's up?"
+
+"Do you know a man named Murdock?"
+
+"Ring man, fired last week. Yes. What of it?"
+
+"Do you know a man named Daley?"
+
+"Fired, too--for drinking. I took his place on this team."
+
+"They hate you. They have plotted to disable you. The trapeze
+yonder--Murdock has cut the ropes, secured the bar with thread, and the
+slightest touch will send a performer to the ring with broken limbs."
+
+"What! Are you crazy or fooling? Doped the rigging? Why, that's murder,
+kid!"
+
+"They have done it just the same. Listen."
+
+Faster than he had ever talked before Andy told of the conversation he
+had overheard in the old hay barn. He hurriedly recited his failure in
+reaching the manager. He told of his rapid ascent of the top canvas. The
+present denouement had resulted.
+
+Under his face rouge Thacher showed the shock of vivid emotions. The
+murmur below was increasing. The manager was looking up impatiently.
+
+Old Benares, across on his trapeze, regarded his partner in
+bewilderment.
+
+Suddenly Thacher shot out some words towards him. It was a kind of
+circus gibberish, mixed with enough straight English to enlighten Andy
+that his story was being imparted to Old Benares.
+
+"You must get me out of this," said Andy. "The audience is becoming
+restive."
+
+Thacher extended his hand, the back showing, in the direction of the
+orchestra. The band, at this signal, struck up a quick, lively tune.
+
+"Get clear on the bar," directed Thacher rapidly, giving Andy more room.
+"Say," he added, in some surprise at Andy's cleverness, "you seem at
+home all right. Performer?"
+
+"Oh, no--only a little amateur practice."
+
+"It's given you the right nerve. Now then, you can't get up again,
+you've got to go down. Want to do it gracefully?"
+
+"Sure," smiled Andy, perfectly calm and collected.
+
+The situation rather delighted him than otherwise. He had supreme
+confidence in his companion, and felt that he was in safe hands.
+
+"Are you grit for a swing?" pursued Thacher.
+
+"Try me," said Andy.
+
+Thacher called over some further words to old Benares. The latter at
+once swung down from his trapeze, holding on by his knees, both hands
+extended towards his partner.
+
+"Do just as I say," directed Thacher to Andy. "Let me get you under the
+arms. Double your knees up to your chin. Can you hold yourself
+that way?"
+
+"Yes," assented Andy.
+
+"Now!" spoke Thacher sharply.
+
+The next instant the performer had dropped Andy in his clasp. He had
+slipped an ankle halter to one of his own limbs.
+
+This alone held him. Head downward, he lightly swung Andy to and fro.
+Andy rolled up like a ball ready for the next move.
+
+All this had consumed less than two minutes. Now the audience believed
+Andy's sensational appearance a regularly arranged feature of the
+performance.
+
+The oddity of a boy in ordinary dress coming into the act, as Andy had
+done, excited the profoundest interest and attention.
+
+The manager in the ring below stood like one petrified, puzzled beyond
+all comprehension.
+
+The orchestra checked its music. An intense strain pervaded. The
+audience swayed, but that only. There was a profound silence.
+
+"One, two, three," said Thacher, at intervals.
+
+"Come," answered old Benares.
+
+At the end of a long, swift swing of his body, Thacher let go of Andy,
+who spun across a ten feet space that looked twenty to the audience
+below. Andy felt a light contact, old Benares' double grip caught
+under his arms.
+
+The act was the merest novice trick analyzed by an expert, but it set
+the audience wild.
+
+A prodigious cheer arose, clapping of hands, juvenile yells of
+admiration. The band came in with a ringing march. Old Benares righted
+himself, Andy with him.
+
+"Su-paarb!" he said. "Can you hold on alone--one little minute?"
+
+"Sure," said Andy.
+
+The trapezist reached up and untied the descending rope, secured it to
+the bar, and shouted to those standing below.
+
+Two ring hands ran out into the sawdust, caught the other end, and held
+it perfectly taut.
+
+"Can you slide down it?" asked Benares.
+
+Andy's eyes sparkled.
+
+"Say, Mr. Benares," he replied, "if I wasn't rattled by all that crowd,
+I could do it head first. I've done the regular, one leg drop,
+fifty times."
+
+"You are admirable--an ex-paart!" declaimed old Benares. "Who are you,
+anyway?"
+
+"Only Andy Wildwood. Do you think I could ever do a real circus act?"
+
+"Do I think--hear them yell! You have made a hit. Good boy. Be careful.
+Go."
+
+Andy essayed an old rope performance he had seen done once, and had many
+times practiced.
+
+This was to secure one leg around the rope, throw himself outwards, fold
+his arms, and wind round and round the rope, slowly descending.
+
+The orchestra caught the cue, and kept time with appropriate music. A
+second hush held the audience. Without a break, Andy descended the forty
+odd feet of cable.
+
+Nearing its end, he caught at the rope to steady himself. Then he
+gracefully leaped free of it to the sawdust, and made a profound bow to
+the audience amid wild thunders of applause.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+AN ARM OF THE LAW
+
+
+The circus manager followed Andy, as the latter darted past the band
+stand and into the passageway leading to the performers' tent.
+
+His face was a blank of wonderment. The ringmaster joined him, and so
+did one or two others as he hurried after Andy.
+
+They found the latter holding to a guy rope, Andy's head was spinning.
+The reaction from intense excitement made him weak and breathless for
+some moments.
+
+The audience was still in a pleasant flutter of commotion over the
+unique act that had caught their fancy.
+
+The Benares Brothers went on with their performance, They cut out "the
+dive for life," but they made up for it by some dazzling aerial
+evolutions that thrilled the spectators, and everybody seemed satisfied.
+
+Five minutes later they joined the group crowding around Andy. The
+manager had just finished questioning the lad as to details of the
+remarkable story he had told.
+
+His face was stern and angry as he uttered some quick words to the
+ringmaster. Then the latter, taking a weighted coiled-up toe rope in his
+hand, went out into the ring.
+
+From where he was Andy could see this flung aloft. It caught across the
+bar of the "doped" trapeze.
+
+At a touch this latter came hurtling to the ground. Old Benares,
+watching also, trembled with intense anger.
+
+"It is infamoos!" he declared. "Where should my partner be, but for this
+boy?"
+
+The ringmaster examined the loosened trapeze bar. Just as Andy had
+stated, two slight threads alone had held it to the supporting ropes.
+
+Thacher laid a friendly, grateful hand on Andy's shoulder. He was too
+full of emotion to speak. Andy looked up and smiled brightly.
+
+"Good thing I was around, wasn't it?" he said carelessly. "Oh, there's
+Mr. Marco."
+
+The Man with the Iron Jaw came up to the group at this juncture.
+
+"You, Andy Wildwood!" he said. "I heard of the trapeze. So it is you
+again? Come with me. No, don't keep him," continued Marco to Thacher in
+a hurried way that made Andy curious. "You can see him again.
+Come, lad."
+
+"What's the trouble, Mr. Marco?" asked Andy.
+
+Marco did not answer. He kept hold of Andy's arm and led him to the
+rear. About to enter the performers' tent he dodged back.
+
+"Keep close to me," he directed in a tone of suppressed excitement.
+"Quick, Wildwood--out this way. Hurry, now."
+
+He had darted towards the bottom of the canvas strip siding the
+passageway. Lifting this up, he thrust Andy under it. Crawling after him
+and arising to his feet, he again grasped Andy's arm.
+
+Headed for the open space the main entrance faced, Marco suddenly jerked
+Andy to one side. He now made swiftly for some small tents abutting the
+performers' tent.
+
+"Hey! hi! hello!" some one had yelled out at them, and Andy saw two
+skulking forms making towards them.
+
+A third figure joined them. Andy discerned evident pursuit in their
+manner and actions.
+
+"Keep with me. Run in," directed Marco.
+
+He had thrust Andy into one of the little tents the boy recognized as a
+dressing room. Marco dropped the flap and stood outside.
+
+"Where's the boy gone to?" puffed out a labored voice.
+
+"Gracious!" exclaimed Andy, under cover, but with a gasp of sheer
+dismay. "I understand now."
+
+Andy recognized the tones of this last speaker. They belonged to Wagner,
+the village constable of Fairview.
+
+"He's in that little tent," spoke another voice.
+
+"Surround it," ordered Wagner. "Here, you stand aside. The boy I've been
+looking for all day is in that tent. I want him."
+
+"Hold on," retorted Marco. "This is private circus property."
+
+"Yes, and I'm a public officer, I'd have you know!" said Wagner. "No
+use. Don't interfere with the course of justice, or you'll get
+into trouble."
+
+There was no light in the tent. The many flaring gasoline torches
+outside, however, cast a radiance that enabled Andy to pretty accurately
+make out the situation.
+
+He traced two shadowy figures making a circuit of the tent. He could see
+Marco push back Wagner.
+
+The latter was unsteady of gait and voice. Andy theorized that he had
+been commissioned by his aunt to pursue him.
+
+Wagner had come down to Centreville with two assistants. Their expenses
+were probably paid in advance, and they had made a kind of individual
+celebration of the trip.
+
+"I've been looking for that boy all day," now spoke Wagner.
+
+"I know you have," answered Marco, standing like a statue at the door of
+the tent.
+
+"He's a fugitive from justice. I'm bound to have him. I'm an arm of the
+law."
+
+"What's he done?" inquired Marco.
+
+"He's nearly broken his poor old aunt's heart."
+
+"I didn't ask about his aunt's heart. What's he done?"
+
+"Oh, why--hum, that's so. Well, he's been expelled from school because
+of his crazy circus capers."
+
+"Indeed. I'm a circus man. Do you observe anything particularly crazy
+about me?" demanded Marco. "Say, my friend, you get out of this. I'm
+Marco, the Man with the Iron Jaw. It won't be healthy for me to tackle
+you, and I will if you make yourself obstreperous. You won't get that
+boy until you show me convincingly that you have a legal right to
+do so."
+
+"Legal right? Why!" cried Wagner, drawing out a paper, "there's my
+warrant."
+
+"Let me look at it, please. Oh," said Marco, examining the document.
+"Issued in another county. We're pretty good lawyers, us show folks, and
+I can tell you that you will have to get a search warrant issued in this
+county before you dare set a foot in that tent."
+
+The Fairview constable was nonplussed. Marco was right, and Wagner knew
+it. He threshed about, fumed and threatened, and finally said:
+
+"All right. I guess you know the law. We may have no right to enter that
+tent without a local search warrant, but the minute we get the boy
+outside we can take him on sight."
+
+"You won't have the chance," observed Marco.
+
+"We'll see. Hey," to his two assistants, "keep a close watch. I'm going
+for a local search warrant. Don't let Andy Wildwood leave that tent. The
+minute he does, nab him. Mister, I hereby notify you that these two men
+are my regularly appointed deputies."
+
+"All right," nodded Marco calmly.
+
+"Watch out, boys. I won't be gone half-an-hour."
+
+At that moment a waddling man came up smoking an immense pipe.
+
+"Ha," he said to Mr. Marco, "I vant mine drums."
+
+"Wait a minute, Snitzellbaum," directed Marco.
+
+Marco held the newcomer at bay until Wagner had disappeared in the
+direction of the town.
+
+Then, leaning over, he whispered in the ear of the rotund musician.
+
+"Ha! ho! hum! vhat? ho--ho! ha--ha!"
+
+"Hush!" warned Marco, with a quick glance at the constable's deputies
+patrolling up and down. "Will you do it?"
+
+"Vill I--oh, schure! Ha-ha! ho-ho! Mister Marco, you are von chenyus."
+
+"Want your drum, eh?" spoke Marco in a loud tone. "Well, go in and get
+it."
+
+Andy knew something was afoot from what he observed. He hoped it was in
+the line of preventing his return to Fairview.
+
+In about five minutes the fat German came out of the tent, lugging his
+big bass drum with him.
+
+"I put him on dot vagon," he puffed. "Good night, Mr. Marco. Vat dey do
+mit dot poy in dere, hey?"
+
+"Oh, I'll attend to him," declared Marco.
+
+Another half-hour went by. At its end Wagner came hurrying up to the
+spot. He had a companion with him, a keen-eyed, shrewd-faced fellow,
+evidently a local officer.
+
+"I have a search warrant here," said the latter.
+
+"All right," nodded Marco accommodatingly, "go on with your search."
+
+"Told you I'd get that boy," announced Wagner, with a chuckle lifting
+the flap of the tent. "Say! How's this? Andy Wildwood is gone!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+ON THE ROAD
+
+
+"Come oud!" said Hans Snitzellbaum.
+
+"I'm glad to," answered Andy Wildwood.
+
+He took a long, refreshing draught of pure air, and stood up and
+stretched his cramped limbs with satisfaction.
+
+When the Man with the Iron Jaw had whispered to the fat musician outside
+the dressing tent guarded by Wagner's assistants, he had asked him to
+get Andy out of the clutches of the constable.
+
+The fat sides of Hans Snitzellbaum shook with jollity, and his merry eye
+twinkled at the hint conveyed by Andy's staunch friend.
+
+When Hans came inside the tent, a whispered word to Andy was sufficient
+to make the young fugitive understand what was coming.
+
+Hans removed the top head of his big bass drum. Andy snuggled along the
+rounded woodwork of the instrument, and the drum head was replaced.
+
+The double load was a pretty heavy one for the portly musician to
+handle, but all went well.
+
+He got away from the dressing tent without arousing the suspicions of
+the constable's assistants. The drum was hoisted to the top of a moving
+wagon at some distance. Andy was rather crowded and short of breath, but
+he lay quiet and serene as the wagon started up.
+
+They must have traveled four miles before the musician's welcome
+invitation to "come oud" followed a second removal of the drum head.
+
+Andy looked about him. They were slowly traversing the main road leading
+from Centreville to Clifton.
+
+There was bright moonlight, and the general view was interesting and
+picturesque. Ahead and behind a seemingly interminable caravan was
+in motion.
+
+Chariots, cages, vehicles holding tent paraphernalia, a calliope, ticket
+wagons, horses, mules, ponies, seemed in endless parade. Performers and
+general circus employees thronged the various vehicles.
+
+That in which Andy now found himself was a wagon with high, slatted
+sides, piled full of trunks, mattresses, seat cushions and curtains.
+
+The fat musician reclined in a dip in the soft bedding; his bulky body
+had formed. Over beyond him lay a sad-faced man in an exhausted slumber,
+looking so utterly done out and ill that Andy pitied him.
+
+A boy about Andy's own age, and two men whose attire and general
+appearance suggested side show "spielers," or those flashily dressed
+fellows who announce the wonders on view inside the minor canvases, lay
+half-buried among some gaudy draperies.
+
+The two men lay with their high silk hats held softly by both hands
+across their breasts. The circus tinge was everywhere. One of them in
+his sleep was saying: "Ziripa, the Serpent Queen. Step up, gentlemen.
+Eats snakes like you eat strawberry shortcake. Eats 'em alive! Bites
+their heads off!"
+
+As the wagon jolted on Hans comfortably smoked a pipe fully four feet
+long. His twinkling little eyes fairly laughed at Andy as the latter
+stepped out of the drum.
+
+"Hey, you find him varm, hey?" he asked.
+
+"I'd have smothered if I hadn't kept my mouth close to that vent hole,"
+explained Andy. "Is it all right for me to show myself now?"
+
+"Yaw," declared the fat musician. "You see dot sign?"
+
+He pointed back a few yards. Andy recognized the four-armed semaphore
+set where a narrow road intersected the highway they were traversing.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Andy quickly, "that shows the State line."
+
+"Yaw, dot vas so. No one can arrest you now, Marco says, and Marco vas
+like a lawyer, hey?"
+
+"Will I see Mr. Marco soon again?" asked Andy.
+
+"For sure dot vas. He toldt me vot to do. Vhen we reach dot Cliftons,
+you vill go mit Billy Blow. He vill takes care of you till morning. Den
+you goes to dot Empire Hotel und sees Miss Stella Starr."
+
+"Oh, I understand," exclaimed Andy brightly and hopefully. "And who is
+Billy Blow, please?"
+
+"Him," explained Hans, pointing to the sleeping man with the sad, tired
+face--"dot is Billy Blow, the clown."
+
+"Eh, what--clown? Not the one who rides the donkey and tells such funny
+stories?"
+
+"Oh, yaw," declared the musician in a matter-of-fact way.
+
+Andy was naturally surprised. He could hardly realize that the person he
+was looking at could ever make up as the mirth-provoking genius who was
+the life and fun of the big circus ring.
+
+"Poor Billy!" said Hans, shaking his head solemnly. "First his vife
+falls from a horse. She vas in dot hospitals. Den his little poy,
+Midget, is sick. Poor Billy!"
+
+Andy suddenly remembered something. He craned his neck and looked
+steadfastly along the road.
+
+"I want to leave the wagon when we get a little further along," he said.
+
+"I likes not dot," answered Snitzellbaum. "Maybe you gets in droubles,
+so?"
+
+"No, it's when we reach an old barn," explained Andy. "I left something
+there earlier in the evening. I won't be a minute getting it."
+
+In about half-an-hour, as they approached the hay barn where Andy had
+overheard the conversation between Daley and Murdock, he slipped down
+from the wagon. He ran ahead, went up among the hay bales, found the
+coat containing the marble bag holding his little stock of money, and
+speedily rejoined the musician.
+
+Hans finished his pipe and sank into a doze. Andy could not sleep. He
+had gone through too much excitement that day to readily
+compose himself.
+
+He lay listening dreamily to the jolty clatter of the wagons, the shouts
+of the drivers, and the commotion of the animals in the menagerie cages.
+Meanwhile he was thinking ardently of the next day. It would decide his
+fate. He felt hopeful that the show would take him on from the fact that
+Miss Stella Starr had required his presence the next morning.
+
+"Hey," spoke a sudden voice, "give us a chaw, will you?"
+
+Andy with a start turned to face the boy he had noticed asleep. The
+latter had rudely knocked his shoulder. He had looked mean to Andy while
+slumbering. He looked tough as he fixed his eyes on Andy, wide open.
+
+"I don't 'chaw,'" said the latter.
+
+"Teeth gone?" sneered the other.
+
+"No, that's why I don't care to lose them," retorted Andy.
+
+"Huh! Say, Snitzellbaum, loan me a little tobacco, will you?"
+
+The speaker had nudged the musician. The latter eyed him with little
+favor.
+
+"You vas a kid," he observed, stirring up. "Vhen you grow up, maybe. Not
+now."
+
+The boy let out a string of rough expletives under his breath. Then
+fixing his eye on Andy curiously, he demanded:
+
+"Who's the kindergarten kid? Trying to break into the show?"
+
+"I may," answered Andy calmly.
+
+"Oho!" chuckled the other, with a wicked grin--"we'll have some fun
+with you, then."
+
+"Maybe not," broke in the musician. "Dot poy has a pull."
+
+"Oh, has he?" snorted the other.
+
+"Yaw. Maybe you don't know, hey, Jim Tapp? You hear about dot cut
+trapeze? Aha! It vas dis poy who discovered dot in time."
+
+"Eh!" ejaculated young Tapp, with a prodigious start. "Yes," he
+continued very slowly, viewing Andy with a searching, hateful look. "I
+heard of it. Says Murdock put up the job to break Thacher's neck."
+
+"Dot vas so."
+
+"How does he know it?"
+
+"He overheardt dose schoundrels tell dot."
+
+"Maybe he's lying."
+
+"Did dot cut trapeze show if he vas, hey?"
+
+"Then he's a spy. Sneaking in on gentlemen's private affairs. Bah!"
+cried Tapp, with a venomous stare at Andy, "I wouldn't train with you
+two at a hundred per week!"
+
+He crawled over to the edge of the wagon preparatory to leaving the
+vehicle and seeking more congenial company.
+
+"Hey, you, Jim Tapp," observed Snitzellbaum, "you vas a pal of Daley,
+hey? You see him? Vell, you tell him ve hang him up by dose heels, und
+Murdock mit him, vonce ve catch dem. See you?"
+
+Tapp disappeared over the edge of the wagon into the road.
+
+"Mein friend," remarked the musician to Andy, "you vatch oud for dot
+poy."
+
+Andy Wildwood recalled the solemn warning before the next day was over.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+BILLY BLOW, CLOWN
+
+
+Billy Blow, the clown, woke up just as the wagon reached the tent site
+at Clifton. It was nearly midnight.
+
+His sleep did not seem to have refreshed him much. He got down from the
+vehicle like a man half-awake, and as if the effort hurt him. He had to
+shake himself to get the stiffness out of his limbs.
+
+"Dis vos dot poy I told you aboud, Billy," said the musician.
+
+"Oh, yes, yes," answered the clown in a preoccupied way, with a quick
+look at Andy. "I'll take him under my wing until Marco comes along. This
+way, kid. I've some baggage to look after. Then we'll bunk."
+
+Andy bade Hans Snitzellbaum adieu with reluctance. He liked the
+bluff-hearted old German with his fatherly ways.
+
+"Goot py for dot bresent times," said the fat musician. "Vhen I sees you
+mit dose tumblers, I gives some big bang-bang, boom-boom, hey?"
+
+"I hope you will," responded Andy with a cheery laugh.
+
+He followed Billy Blow. The latter finally found the wagon he was after.
+He bundled its contents about and got a small wooden box and a big
+wicker trunk to one side.
+
+"Wish you'd mind these till I see if I can't make quick sleeping
+quarters," Blow said to Andy.
+
+"Yes, sir, I'll be glad to," answered Andy willingly, and the clown
+hurried off in his usual nervous fashion.
+
+Andy was kept keenly awake for the ensuing hour. It did not seem to be
+night at all. The scene about him was one of constant activity.
+
+Andy caught a glimpse of real circus life. Its details filled him with
+wonderment, admiration and keen interest.
+
+The scene was one of constantly increasing hustle and bustle. There was
+infinite variety and excitement in the occasion. For all that, there was
+a system, precision and progress in all that was done that
+fascinated Andy.
+
+The boy was witnessing the building of a great city in itself within the
+space of half-a-dozen hours.
+
+The caravan wound in, section by section. The wagons moved to set places
+as if doing so automatically, discharged their cumbersome loads,
+and retired.
+
+First came the baggage train, then the stake and chain wagons, the side
+shows, paraphernalia, and the menagerie cages.
+
+The circus area proper had been all marked out, the ring graded,
+sawdust-strewn, and straw scattered to absorb dampness.
+
+The blacksmiths' wagons, cooks' caravan and the minor tents all removed
+to the far rear. The naphtha torches were set every twenty feet apart to
+illuminate proceedings. Workers were hauling on the ground great
+hogsheads of water. Near the dining tents half-a-hundred table cloths
+were already hanging out on wire clothes lines to dry.
+
+Some men were washing small tents with paraffin to season them against
+the weather. Finally the great forty-horse team lumbered up with its
+mighty load. The boss canvasman with half-a-hundred assistants began the
+construction of "the main top," or performing tent, holding fifteen
+thousand people.
+
+Andy, absorbed in every maneuver displayed, was completely lost in the
+deepest interest when a voice at his side aroused him.
+
+"Tired waiting?" asked Billy Blow.
+
+"Oh, no," answered Andy, "I could watch this forever, I think."
+
+"It would soon get stale," declared the clown, with a faint smile. "Give
+us a hand, partner--one at a time, and we'll get my togs and ourselves
+under cover."
+
+Andy took one handle of the box, the clown the other. They carried it to
+the door of one of twenty small tents near the cook's quarters. They
+brought the wicker trunk also, and then carried box and trunk inside
+the tent.
+
+Andy looked about it curiously. A candle burned on a bench. Beyond it
+was a mattress. Near one side, and boxed in by platform sections as if
+to keep off draughts, was a second smaller mattress.
+
+On a stool near it sat a thin-faced, lady-like woman. She was smiling
+down at a little boy lying huddled up in shawls and a comforter.
+
+"This is my boy, Wildwood," spoke Billy Blow. "New hand, Midge--if he
+makes good."
+
+The little fellow nodded in a grave, mature way at Andy. According to
+his size, he resembled a child of four. That was why they called him
+Midget. Andy learned later that he was ten years old. He had an act with
+the circus, going around the ring perched on the shoulders of a
+bare-back rider. He also sometimes had a part with "the Tom Thumb
+acrobats," doing some clever hoop-jumping with a trick Shetland pony.
+
+He seemed to be just recovering from a fit of sickness. His face,
+prematurely old, was pinched and colorless.
+
+"Our Columbine in the Humpty Dumpty afterpiece," was the way the clown
+introduced the lady. "I don't know how to thank you for all your
+trouble, Miss Nellis."
+
+"Don't mention it, Billy," responded the woman. "Any of us would fight
+for it to help you or the kid, wouldn't we, Midge?"
+
+"I don't know why," answered the lad in a weary way. "I ain't much good
+any more."
+
+"Now hear that ungrateful boy!" rallied Miss Nellis. "Billy, the doctor
+says his whole trouble was poisoned canned stuff, bad water and a cold.
+He's broken the fever. Here's some medicine. Every hour a spoonful until
+gone, and doctor says he'll be fit as ever in a day or two."
+
+"That's good," said the clown, a lone tear trickling down his cheek. "I
+wish I could afford the hotel for the lad, instead of this
+rough-and-tumble shack life, but my wife's hospital bills drain me
+pretty well."
+
+"Never mind. Better times coming, Billy. Don't you get disheartened,"
+cheered the little woman. "Remember now, don't miss that medicine."
+
+Miss Nellis went away. Andy heard poor Billy sigh as he adjusted the
+larger mattress.
+
+"There's your bunk," he said to Andy. "Marco will see you early in the
+morning."
+
+Andy took off his coat and shoes and lay down on the rude bed. He
+watched Midget tracing the outlines of a picture with his white finger
+in a book Miss Nellis had brought him.
+
+Andy saw the clown go over to a stool and place a homely, old-fashioned
+watch and a spoon and medicine bottle Miss Nellis had given him upon it.
+
+Then Blow came back to the big mattress and sat down on it. He bent his
+face in his hands in a tired way. Every minute he would sway with
+sleepiness, start up, and try to keep awake.
+
+"The man is half-dead for the want of sleep, worn out with all his
+worries," thought Andy. "Mr. Blow," he said aloud, sitting up, "I can't
+sleep a wink. This is all so new to me. I'll just disturb you rustling
+about here. Please let me attend to the little fellow, won't you, and
+you take a good sound snooze? Come, it will do you lots of good."
+
+"No, no," began the clown weakly.
+
+"Please," persisted Andy. "Honest, I can't close my eyes. Now don't you
+have a care. I'll give Midget his medicine to the second."
+
+Andy felt a glow of real pleasure and satisfaction as the clown lay
+down. He was asleep in two minutes. Andy went over to the stool.
+
+"I'm going to be your nurse," he told Midget. "Suppose you sleep, too."
+
+"I can't," answered the little fellow. "I've been asleep all day. Wish I
+had another book, I've looked this one through a hundred times."
+
+"I could tell you some stories," Andy suggested. "Good ones."
+
+"Will you, say, will you?" pleaded the clown's boy eagerly.
+
+"You bet--and famous ones."
+
+Andy kept his promise. He ransacked his mind for the brightest stories
+he had ever read. Never was there a more interested listener. Andy
+talked in a low voice so as not to disturb the clown.
+
+Midget seemed most to like the real stories of his own village life that
+Andy finally drifted into.
+
+"That's what I'd like," he said, after Andy had told of some boyish
+adventures back at Fairview.
+
+"Oh, I'm so tired of moving on--all the time moving on!"
+
+"Strange," thought Andy, "and that's just the kind of a life I'm trying
+to get into."
+
+Midget became so animated that Andy finally got him to tell some stories
+about circus life. All that, however, was "shop talk" to the little
+performer, but Andy learned considerable from the keen-witted little
+fellow, who appeared to know as much about the ins and outs of show life
+as some veteran of the ring.
+
+He enlightened his auditor greatly in the line of real circus slang.
+Andy learned that in show vernacular clowns were "joys," and other
+performers "kinkers." A pocket book was a "leather," a hat a "lid," a
+ticket a "fake," an elephant a "bull." Lemonade was "juice," eyes were
+"lamps," candy peddlers were "butchers," and the various tents "tops,"
+as, for instance: "main top," "cook top," and the side shows were
+"kid tops."
+
+Finally little Midge went to sleep. Andy woke him up each hour till
+daybreak to take his medicine. After the last dose Andy went outside to
+stretch his limbs and get a mouthful of fresh air.
+
+He saw men still tirelessly working here and there. Some were housing
+the live stock, some unpacking seat stands, some fixing the banners on
+the main tent.
+
+Andy did not go far from the clown's tent. It was fairly dawn. Happening
+to glance towards the chandelier wagon he came to a dead stand-still,
+and stared.
+
+"Hello!" said Andy with animation. "There's that Jim Tapp, and the man
+with him--yes, it's the fellow, Murdock, I saw with Daley in the old
+hay barn."
+
+As he stood gazing Tapp caught sight of him. He started violently and
+spoke some quick words to his companion, pointing towards Andy.
+
+"That's the man who cut the trapeze," murmured Andy. "I'll rouse the
+clown and tell him. He's a dangerous man to have lurking around."
+
+"Hey! hey!" called out Tapp at just that moment.
+
+Both he and his companion started running towards Andy. There was that
+in their bearing that warned Andy they meant him no good. Andy did
+not pause.
+
+"Stop, I tell you!" shouted the man, Murdock.
+
+Andy made a bee-line for the clown's tent. As he neared it he glanced
+back over his shoulder.
+
+Tapp was still putting after him. His companion had stooped to pick up
+an iron tent stake from the ground.
+
+This he let drive with full force. It took Andy squarely between the
+shoulders, and he dropped like a shot.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+ANDY JOINS THE SHOW
+
+
+The breath seemed clear knocked out of Andy's body. The shock of the
+blow from the stake deprived him of consciousness.
+
+Andy opened his eyes in about two minutes. He found himself lying on the
+ground, half-a-dozen circus employees gathered around him.
+
+"Help me up," said Andy in a confused way. "I mustn't miss giving Midge
+his medicine."
+
+"Eh--the clown's boy?" spoke one of the men sharply.
+
+"Oh," said Andy, regaining his senses more completely, "have I been here
+long?"
+
+"About two minutes."
+
+"Then Midge is all right--oh, dear!"
+
+Andy, trying to arise, gasped and tottered weakly. The man who had
+addressed him seemed to be a sort of boss of the others. He held Andy
+firmly as he said:
+
+"Belong with Billy Blow? All right, we'll take you to his tent. But,
+say--what did those fellows knock you out for?"
+
+"Did you see the fellows?" inquired Andy.
+
+"I was way over near the big bunk top. I heard some one holler, saw you
+running. Two fellows were after you. One let drive that stake. It took
+you between the shoulders like a cannon ball. An ugly throw, and a
+wicked one. Wonder it didn't fetch you for good."
+
+"One of the fellows was a boy named Jim Tapp," said Andy.
+
+"That rascal, eh?" spoke the man. "Thought he'd quit us. Was going to.
+Borrowed all he could, and salary tied up on an attachment."
+
+"The other was a man named Murdock. He's the fellow who cut the trapeze
+on Benares Brothers last night."
+
+"What!" cried the man, with a jump. "Hey, men--you hear that? Go for
+both! Get them! They're wanted for these crooked jobs."
+
+Those addressed started on a chase, pursuant to directions of their
+leader who had seen Murdock and Tapp run away as he came up to the
+prostrate Andy.
+
+The man himself helped Andy to the clown's tent. Their entrance aroused
+Billy Blow, who sprang up quickly as he noticed that Andy walked in a
+pained, disabled fashion. He was quite another man for his long,
+refreshing sleep.
+
+"Why, what's the matter?" he asked.
+
+Andy's companion explained. The clown expressed his sympathy and
+indignation in the same breath. He urged that the show detectives be
+aroused at once.
+
+"I heard Harding say last night he'd spend a thousand dollars, but he'd
+get Daley and Murdock behind the bars for attempted murder," declared
+the clown.
+
+The man who had assisted Andy went away saying he would consult with Mr.
+Giles Harding, the owner of the circus, at once.
+
+"You see, Murdock ventured here to find out how his wicked plot
+succeeded, never suspecting that he was found out," theorized the clown.
+"That fellow, Tapp, was always his crony. They're a bad lot, you can
+guess that from the stake they threw at you. No bones broken? Good!
+Hurts? I'll soon fix that. Strip, now."
+
+"All right."
+
+The clown had felt all over Andy's back as the latter sat down on the
+bench. Now he made Andy take off his coat and shirt. Then he produced a
+big bottle from his wicker trunk.
+
+"Ever hear of the Nine Oils?" he asked, as he poured a lot of black,
+greasy stuff out of the bottle into the palm of his hand.
+
+"No," said Andy.
+
+"This is it," explained the clown, beginning to rub Andy's back
+vigorously. "You've got quite a bruise, and I suppose it pains. Just lay
+down. When I get through, if the Nine Oils don't fix you up, I'll give
+you nine dollars."
+
+The clown rubbed Andy good and hard. Then he made him lie down on the
+big mattress. The Nine Oils had a magical effect. Andy's pain and
+soreness were soon soothed. He fell into a doze, and woke up to observe
+that Marco was in the tent conversing with the clown.
+
+"Hi, Wildwood," hailed Andy's friend. "Having quite a time of it, aren't
+you?"
+
+Andy got up as good as ever. His back smarted slightly--that was the
+only reminder he had of Murdock's savage assault.
+
+Billy Blow had been telling Marco about Andy's latest mishap. Marco was
+greatly worked up over it. He said the attempted trick on old Benares's
+partner had become noised about, and if the two plotters were arrested
+and brought anywhere near the circus, they stood a good show
+of lynching.
+
+"I'll step down with you to the hotel about ten o'clock, Wildwood," said
+Marco. "Miss Starr has some word for you."
+
+Andy simply said "Thank you," but his hopes rose tremendously. He
+accompanied Marco to the big eating tent and at the man's invitation had
+breakfast. The food was good and everything was scrupulously clean.
+
+Marco got a big tin tray, and he and Andy carried a double breakfast to
+Billy Blow's tent.
+
+The clown had got rested up and was bright and chipper, for little Midge
+seemed on the mend, and was as lively as a cricket. The little fellow
+ate a hearty meal, and then expressed a wish for an airing. Marco
+borrowed one of the wagons used by some performing goats, and Andy rode
+Midge around the grounds for half-an-hour.
+
+At about eight o'clock Andy went to the principal street of the town. He
+bought himself a new shirt and a cap. Going back to the clown's tent he
+washed up, and made himself generally tidy and presentable for the
+coming interview at the Empire Hotel.
+
+Andy had a full hour to spare before the time set for that event
+arrived. He took a stroll about the circus grounds, meeting jolly old
+Hans Snitzellbaum, and Benares and his partner, Thacher.
+
+His part taken in the impromptu arenic performance of the evening
+previous had become generally known. Andy was pointed out to the
+watchmen and others, and no one hindered him going about as he chose.
+
+Andy viewed another phase of show detail now. It was the picturesque
+part, the family side of circus daily life.
+
+He saw women busy at fancy work or sewing, their children playing with
+the ring ponies or petting the cake-walking horse.
+
+Some of the men were mending their clothes, others were washing out
+collars and handkerchiefs. What element of home life there was in the
+circus experience Andy witnessed in his brief stroll.
+
+He was on time to the minute at the Empire Hotel. A bell-boy showed him
+up to the ladies' parlor on the second floor.
+
+Miss Stella Starr was listening to some members of the circus minstrel
+show trying over some new airs on the piano.
+
+The moment she saw him she came forward with hand extended and a welcome
+smile on her kindly face.
+
+She made Andy feel at home at once. She insisted on hearing all the
+details of his experience since the evening he had saved her from
+disaster during the wind storm.
+
+"I think now just as I thought night before last, Andy," she said
+finally. "You do not owe much of duty to that aunt of yours. I think I
+would fight pretty hard to get away, in your place, with the reform
+school staring me in the face. Well, Andy, I have spoken to
+Mr. Harding."
+
+"Can--can I join?" asked Andy, with a good deal of anxiety.
+
+"Yes, Andy. I had a long talk with him about you, and--here he is now."
+
+A brisk-moving, keen-faced man of about fifty entered the parlor just
+then.
+
+"Mr. Harding, this is the boy, Andy Wildwood, I told you about," said
+Miss Starr.
+
+"Oh, indeed?" observed the showman, looking Andy all over with one
+swift, comprehensive glance. "They tell me you can do stunts,
+young man?"
+
+"Oh, a little--on the bar and tumbling," said Andy.
+
+"Well, I suppose you don't expect to star it for awhile," said Harding.
+"You must begin at the bottom, you know."
+
+"I want to, sir."
+
+"Very good. I will give you a card to the manager. He will make you
+useful in a general way until we have our two days' rest at Tipton, I'll
+look you up then, and see if you've got any ring stuff in you."
+
+Andy took the card tendered by the showman after the latter had written
+a few words on it in pencil.
+
+Andy made his best bow to Miss Starr. He was delighted and fluttered. He
+showed it so much that the showman was pleased out of the common.
+
+"Come back a minute," he called out. "My boy," he continued, placing a
+friendly hand on Andy's shoulder, "you have made a good start with us in
+that Benares matter. Keep on the right side always, and you will
+succeed. Never swear, quarrel or gamble. Assist our patrons, and be
+civil and obliging on all occasions. The circus is a grand centre of
+fraternal good will, properly managed, and the right circus stands for
+health, happiness, virtue and vigor. Its motto should be courage,
+ambition and energy, governed by honest purpose and tempered by
+humanity. I don't want to lecture, but I am giving you the benefit of
+what has cost me twenty years experience and a good many thousands
+of dollars."
+
+"Thank you, sir, I shall not forget what you have told me," said Andy.
+
+For all that, Andy's mind was for the present full only of the pomp and
+glitter of his new calling. One supreme thought made his heart bubble
+over with joy:
+
+At last he had reached the goal of his fondest wishes. Andy Wildwood had
+"joined the circus."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE REGISTERED MAIL
+
+
+Andy hurried back to the circus grounds the happiest boy on earth. He
+went straight to the clown's tent.
+
+Billy Blow was making up for the morning parade. Dressed up as a
+way-back farmer, he was to drive a hay wagon, breaking into the
+procession here and there along the line of march. Finally, when he had
+created a sensation, he was to drop his disguise and emerge in his usual
+popular ring character.
+
+While Billy was putting the finishing touches to his toilet he conversed
+with Andy, congratulating him on his success in getting a job with
+the show.
+
+"Wait about half-an-hour till the parade gets off the grounds," he
+advised Andy. "Scripps, the manager, will be busy till then. You'll find
+him in the paper tent."
+
+Andy knew what that was--the structure containing the programmes and
+general advertising and posting outfits of the show. He had noticed it
+earlier in the day. A wagon inside the tent, with steps and windows,
+comprised the manager's private office.
+
+Little Midge was sitting up playing with some show children who had
+brought in a lot of toys. Andy went outside with Billy.
+
+"See here," said the clown, as he hurried off to join the parade. "Tell
+Scripps that you bunk with me. Any objection?"
+
+"I should say not."
+
+"You're welcome. The general crowd they'd put you with is a bit too
+rough for a raw recruit. Just stand what they give you till we reach
+Tipton. You've got friends enough to pull you up into the performers'
+rank. We'll fix you out there."
+
+"Thank you," said Andy.
+
+He strolled about with a happy smile on his face. Prospects looked fine,
+and Andy's heart warmed as he thought of all the good friends he
+had made.
+
+"They're a nice crowd," he thought--"Miss Starr, Marco, the Benares
+Brothers, the clown. How different, though, to what I used to think!
+It's business with them, real work, for all the tinsel and glare. It's a
+pleasant business, though, and they must make a lot of money."
+
+There was a shrill, whistling shriek from the calliope wagon. The
+various performers scampered from their dressing rooms at the signal.
+
+Each person, vehicle and animal fell into line in the morning caravan
+with a promptness and ease born of long practice.
+
+Soon there was a fluttering line of gay color, rich plush hangings,
+bullion-trimmed uniforms, silken flags and streamers.
+
+Zeno, the balloon clown, eating "redhots," i.e. peanuts, led the
+procession, bouncing up and down on a rubber globe in the advance
+chariot. The bands began to play. The prancing horses, rumbling wagons,
+screaming calliope, frolicking tumblers, tramp bicyclists weaving in and
+out in grotesque costumes, often on one wheel, the Tallyho stage filled
+with smiling ladies, old Sultan, the majestic lion, gazing in calm
+dignity down from his high extension cage--all this passed, a fantastic
+panorama, before Andy's engrossed gaze.
+
+"It's grand!" decided Andy--"just grand! A fellow can never get lonesome
+here, night or day. I'm going to like it. Now for the manager. Hope I
+don't have any trouble."
+
+When Andy came to the paper tent he found a good many people inside.
+There were several performers and canvas men on crutches or bandaged up.
+There were village merchants with bills, newspaper men after free passes
+and persons seeking employment.
+
+They were called in turn up the steps of the wagon that constituted the
+manager's office.
+
+Mr. Scripps was a rapid talker, a brisk man of business, and he disposed
+of the cases presented in quick order.
+
+Andy saw four or five dissipated looking men discharged at a word. The
+applicants for work were ordered to appear at Tipton, two days later.
+
+Several were after an advance on their salary. Some farmers appeared
+with claims for foraging done by circus hands. Finally Andy got to the
+front and tendered the card Mr. Harding had given him.
+
+"All right," shot out Scripps sharply, giving the lad a keen look.
+"You're the one who blocked the game on Benares? Good for you! We'll
+remember that, later."
+
+Scripps glanced over a pasteboard sheet on his desk, first asking Andy
+his name and age, and writing his answers down in a big-paged book.
+
+"Half-a-dollar a day and keep, for the present," he said.
+
+"All right," nodded Andy--"it's a start."
+
+"Just so. Let me see. Ah, here we are. Report to the Wild Man of Borneo
+side top at twelve."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Hammer the big triangle there till two. Then--let me see again. Know
+how to ride a horse?"
+
+"Oh, yes," replied Andy eagerly.
+
+"All right, at two o'clock report for the jockey ring section at the
+horse tent. They'll hand you a costume."
+
+Scripps wrote a number on a red ticket and handed this to Andy--his pass
+as an employee. Just then a newcomer bundled up the steps
+unceremoniously, a red-faced, fussy old fellow.
+
+"Mail's in," he announced. "Give me the O.K."
+
+Scripps fumbled in a drawer of his desk and brought out a rubber stamp
+and pad.
+
+"Mind your eye, Rip," he observed, casting a scrutinizing look over the
+intruder.
+
+"Which eye?" demanded the old fellow.
+
+"The one that sees a bottle and glass the quickest."
+
+"H'm!" grumbled Ripley, or "Rip Van Winkle," as he was familiarly known
+by the show people. "My eyes are all right. Don't fret. I've been twenty
+years with this here show, man and boy--"
+
+"Yes, yes, we know all about that," interrupted Scripps. "You're
+seasoned, right enough. Don't leave the rig to come home without a
+driver, though, and money letters aboard, as you did last week. Here is
+a new hand. Break him in to keep his time employed."
+
+Ripley viewed Andy with some disfavor. Evidently he regarded him as a
+sort of guardian.
+
+Andy, however, silently followed him outside. Ripley soon reached a
+close vehicle, boarded up back of the seat and with two doors at
+the rear.
+
+A big-boned mottled horse, once evidently a beauty, was between the
+shafts. As Andy lifted himself to the seat beside Ripley, the latter
+made a peculiar, purring: "Z-rr-rp, Lute!"
+
+He did not even take up the reins. The horse, with a neigh and a frisky
+dance movement of the forefeet, started up.
+
+"Right, left, slow, Lute. Turn--now go"--Ripley gave a dozen directions
+within the next five minutes. He was showing off for Andy's benefit. The
+latter was, in fact, pleased. The animal obeyed every direction with a
+precision and intelligence that fairly amazed the boy.
+
+Finally getting to a clear course outside the circus tangle, Ripley took
+up the reins.
+
+He set his lips and uttered two sharp whistles, ending in a kind of
+hiss.
+
+Andy was very nearly jerked out of his seat He had to hold on to its
+side bar. For about five hundred yards the horse took a sprint that
+knocked off his cap and fairly took his breath away.
+
+"Say, he's great!" Andy exclaimed irrepressibly, as Ripley slowed down
+again.
+
+"I guess so," nodded the latter, aroused out of his crustiness by Andy's
+enthusiasm. "That Lucille was famous, once. Past her prime a little now,
+but when her old driver has the reins, she don't forget, does she?"
+
+Ripley took a turn into a side street and finally halted, giving Andy
+the reins.
+
+"Got to order something," he said.
+
+Andy saw him enter a store, but only to leave it by a side door and
+cross an alley into a saloon.
+
+Ripley tried to appear very business-like when he came back to the
+wagon, but Andy caught the taint of liquor in his breath.
+
+Twice again the circus veteran made stops in the same manner. He became
+quite chatty and confidential.
+
+Ripley explained to Andy that he went regularly for the circus mail at
+each town where the show stopped.
+
+"Postmasters kick, with five hundred strangers calling for their mail,"
+he explained, "so we always forward a list of the employees. This mail,
+just before pay day, when the crowd is usually hard up, brings a good
+many money letters from friends. That rubber stamp you saw the manager
+give me O.K.'s all the registered cards at the post office. Once the
+wagon was robbed. The looters made quite a haul. Not when I was on
+duty, though."
+
+At a drug store Ripley got several packages and some more at a general
+merchandise store. Finally they reached the post office, and Ripley
+drove around to a sort of hitching alley at its side.
+
+"Come with me to see how we do things," he invited Andy. "Bring along
+those two mail bags."
+
+Andy had already noticed the bags. One was quite large. It was made of
+canvas, with a snap lock. The other was of leather, and smaller in size.
+
+Swinging these over his shoulder, Ripley entered the post-office. He
+showed his credentials from the circus, and was admitted behind the
+letter cases of the places.
+
+Andy watched him receive over a hundred letters and packages, receipting
+for the same on registry delivery cards. This lot he placed in the small
+leather bag.
+
+The ordinary mail lay sorted out for the circus on a stamping table.
+This went into the big canvas pouch.
+
+The circus newspaper mail was ready tagged in a hempen sack. Ripley
+carried this out to Andy.
+
+"Toss it in the wagon," he ordered, following with the letter pouches.
+
+Andy opened the back doors of the wagon and tossed in the newspaper bag.
+
+"Say, back in a minute," observed Ripley, depositing his own burdens on
+the front wagon seat.
+
+Andy stood watching him. Ripley rounded a corner in the alley where a
+wooden finger indicated a side entrance to a hotel bar. Ripley's failing
+was manifest, and Andy decided that he did, indeed, need a guardian.
+
+The wagon stood on a space quite secluded from the street. Near the
+entrance to the alley several men were lounging about.
+
+Andy carried the leather pouch with him as he went around to the open
+doors at the rear of the wagon.
+
+He climbed in, and stowed the newspaper bag and what packages they had
+already collected in a tidy pile. Ripley had indicated that there was
+quite a miscellaneous load to pick up about town before they returned to
+the circus.
+
+Andy was thus employed when the rear doors came together with a sharp
+snap.
+
+They shut him in a close prisoner, for they were self-locking, on the
+outside only.
+
+Andy, in complete darkness, now groped back to the doors. He heard
+quick, suppressed tones outside.
+
+The vehicle jolted. Some one had jumped to the front seat. A whip
+snapped. Old Lute started up with a bound, throwing Andy off his
+footing. "Send her spinning!" reached him in a muffled voice from the
+front seat.
+
+"Jump with the bag when we turn that old shed," answered other tones.
+"Why, say! There's only one mail bag."
+
+"I saw them bring out two. I am dead sure of it."
+
+"And this is only common letters."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Jim Tapp described them--'get the leather one,' he says. 'It's got the
+money mail in it.'"
+
+"Then where is it?"
+
+"The kid must have it."
+
+"Inside the wagon?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Whoa."
+
+With a sharp jerk the horse was pulled to a halt.
+
+Andy heard the two men on the seat jump to the ground. He knew that
+their motive was robbery. He knew further that this was another plot of
+bad Jim Tapp, the friend and associate of criminals.
+
+In another minute the men would open the wagon doors, pull him out,
+perhaps assault him, take the registered mail and fly.
+
+Andy had only a second to act in. He theorized that the wagon, following
+the alley, was now probably halted in some secluded side lane.
+
+To escape the clutches of the would-be robbers was everything. Andy,
+having no weapon of defence, was no match for them.
+
+"If the rig once reaches the crowded streets, I'm safe," thought Andy.
+
+Then he carried out a speedy programme. Forming his lips in a pucker, as
+he had seen Ripley do, Andy uttered two sharp whistles, then a clear,
+resounding hiss.
+
+"Thunder!" yelled a voice outside.
+
+"Ouch!" echoed a second.
+
+The horse had given one wild, prodigious bound at hearing the familiar
+signal.
+
+The vehicle must have grazed one of the thieves. Its front wheels
+knocked the other down.
+
+"My! I'm in for it," instantly decided Andy.
+
+For, swayed from side to side, he realized that the circus wagon was
+dashing forward at runaway speed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+A WILD JOURNEY
+
+
+Andy Wildwood found himself in a box, in more ways than one.
+
+Judging from the sounds he had heard, the men bent on securing the
+registered mail pouch had been baffled. The old circus horse had started
+on a sudden and surprisingly swift sprint. From the feeling of turns,
+jerks and swings, Andy decided that within four minutes the rig had left
+the post-office fully half-a-mile to the rear.
+
+"I've started the horse all right," said Andy. "Old Ripley's signal has
+acted like a charm. How to stop the animal, though. That is the present
+question?"
+
+Andy ran at the two rear doors of the wagon. He steadied himself, arms
+extended so as to touch either side of the box. Then he gave the doors a
+tremendous kick with the sole of his shoe.
+
+The doors did not budge. He felt over their inner surfaces where they
+came together. The lock was set in the wood. They could be opened only
+from the outside.
+
+The wagon box had one aperture, Andy discovered. This was a small
+ventilating grating up in one corner above the seat.
+
+He sprang up on the newspaper bag. This brought his eyes on a level with
+the grating. It was about four by six inches, with slanting slats. Andy
+could see down at the horse and ahead along the road.
+
+He grew excited and somewhat uneasy as he looked out. Lute was a sight
+for a race track. Her head down, mane flowing, tail extended, she was
+covering the ground with tremendous strides.
+
+Farther back on the route Andy had felt the wagon collide with curbs and
+with other vehicles. Once there was a crash and a yell, and he felt sure
+they had taken a wheel off a rig they passed. Now, however, they
+appeared to be quite clear of the town proper.
+
+The road ahead was a slanting one. A steep grade fully half-a-mile long
+led to a stone bridge crossing a river. It was so steep that Andy
+wondered that Lute did not stumble. The wagon wheels ground and slid so
+that the vehicle lifted at the rear, as if its own momentum would cause
+a sudden tip-over.
+
+"We'll never reach the bottom of the hill," decided Andy. "My! we're
+going!"
+
+He shouted out words of direction to the horse he had heard Ripley
+employ. Lute did not hear, at least did not heed. Andy remembered now
+that in stopping the horse Ripley had used the reins.
+
+He held his breath as, striking a rut, the wagon bounded up in the air.
+He clung for dear life, with one hand clutching the ventilator bars as
+the vehicle was flung sideways over ten feet, threatening to snap off
+the wheels, which bent and cracked on their axles at the
+terrific strain.
+
+Contrary to Andy's anticipations they neared the bottom of the hill
+without a mishap. Suddenly, however, he gave a shout. A new danger
+threatened.
+
+The bridge had large stone posts where it began. Then a frail wooden
+railing was its only side protection. The roadway was not very broad.
+Two full loads of hay could never have passed one another on
+that bridge.
+
+"There's a team coming," breathed Andy. "We'll collide, sure. Whoa!
+whoa!" he yelled through the grating. "No use. It's a smash, and a
+bad one."
+
+Andy fixed a distressed glance on the team half-way across the bridge. A
+collision was inevitable. Lute, striking the level, only increased her
+already terrific rate of speed.
+
+Andy took heart, however, as she swerved to one side.
+
+The intelligent animal appeared to enjoy her wild runaway, and wanted to
+keep it up. Apparently she aimed to keep precisely to her own side of
+the road and avoid a collision.
+
+The driver of the team coming had jumped from his seat and pulled his
+rig to the very edge of the planking. All might have gone well but for a
+slight miscalculation.
+
+As Lute's feet struck the bridge plankway, she pressed close to the
+right. The wagon swerved. The front end of the box landed squarely
+against the stone post.
+
+The shock was a stunning one. It tore the wagon shafts, harness and all,
+clear off the horse. With a circling twist the vehicle reversed like
+lightning. The box struck the wooden rail. This snapped like a
+pipe stem.
+
+Lute, dashed on like a whirlwind, the driver of the other team staring
+in appalled wonder, the box slid clear of the plankway and went whirling
+to the river bed fifteen feet below.
+
+Andy was thrown from side to side. Then, as the wagon landed, a new
+crash and a new shock dazed his wits completely. He was hurled the
+length of the box, his head fortunately striking where the newspaper bag
+intervened.
+
+Judging from the concussion, Andy decided that the wagon box had landed
+on a big rock in the river bed. There it remained stationary. He
+struggled to an upright position. One arm was badly wrenched. His face
+was grazed and bleeding.
+
+"If I don't get out some way," he panted, "I'll drown."
+
+It looked that way. He felt a great spurt of water, pouring in rapidly
+when the ventilator dipped under the surface. Then, too, the crash had
+wrenched the box structure at various seams. Water was forcing its way
+in, bottom, sides and top.
+
+From ankle-deep to knee-deep, Andy stood helpless. Then, locating the
+door end of the vehicle, he drew back and massed all his muscle for a
+supreme effort. Shoulders first Andy posed, and then threw himself
+forward, battering-ram fashion. He felt he must act and that quickly, or
+else the worst might be his own.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+A FREAK OF NATURE
+
+
+The doors at the rear of the wagon box gave way as Andy's body met their
+inner surface with full force. He stood now on a slant, his body
+submerged to the waist.
+
+The box had crashed on top of one big flat rock in the river bed, and
+had tilted on this foundation against another upright rock. But for this
+it might have gone clear under water or floated down stream, and Andy
+might have been drowned.
+
+All through his stirring runaway experience Andy had kept possession of
+the registered mail pouch. It was still slung from his shoulder as he
+gazed around him. He was careful lest he disturb the equilibrium of the
+wreck. He found out now that the door hinges had been knocked clear off
+and the frame badly wrenched in its fall.
+
+"Hello! hello!" shouted an excited voice overhead.
+
+"Hello yourself," sang back Andy, looking up.
+
+The driver of the team into which the runaway had so nearly dashed stood
+looking down from the bridge planking. His eyes stared wide as Andy
+suddenly appeared like a jack-in-the-box.
+
+"Was you in there?" gulped the man.
+
+"I was nowhere else," answered Andy. "Say, mister, where's that horse?"
+
+"Oh, he's all right. See him?"
+
+The man pointed along the other shore of the river bank. Lute had
+crossed the bridge. She had now taken herself to some marshy grass
+stretches, and was grazing placidly.
+
+Andy was about twenty feet from the shore. He could nearly make it by
+jumping from rock to rock, he thought. At one or two places, however,
+the current ran strong and deep, and he saw that he might have to do
+some swimming.
+
+"See here," he called up to the man on the bridge, "have you got a rope?"
+
+"Yes," nodded the man.
+
+"Long enough to reach down here?"
+
+"I guess so. Let's try. Wait a minute."
+
+He went to his wagon. Shortly he dropped a new stout rope used in
+securing hay loads. It had length and to spare.
+
+Andy tied the mail pouch to its end. Then he groped under water in the
+wagon box. He managed to fish out the various parcels it held, including
+the newspaper bag.
+
+These he sent up first. Then the man at the other end braced the cable
+against a railing post. Andy came up the rope with agility.
+
+He stamped and shook the water from his soaked shoes and clothing. The
+mail bag he again suspended across his shoulders.
+
+"Hi, another runaway!" suddenly exclaimed his companion.
+
+Andy traced an increasing clatter of a horse's hoofs and wagon wheels to
+a rig descending the hill at breakneck speed.
+
+"No," he said. "It's Ripley."
+
+"Who's he?"
+
+"The man who drove that wagon. Stop! stop!" cried Andy, springing into
+the middle of the bridge roadway and waving his arms.
+
+The rig came up. It was driven by a man wearing a badge. Andy decided he
+was some local police officer. Ripley was fearfully excited and his face
+showed it.
+
+"What did you do with that wagon?" sputtered Ripley, jumping to the
+plankway.
+
+Andy pointed down at the river bed and then at the distant horse.
+Briefly as he could he narrated what had occurred.
+
+Ripley nearly had a fit. He instantly realized that whoever was to blame
+for the runaway, it was not Andy.
+
+"Where's the mail?" he asked.
+
+"There's the newspaper bag," said Andy; "here's the registered mail
+pouch. Those thieves took the other bag of mail."
+
+"They did? Do you hear, officer? Get after them quick, won't you? Never
+mind us. Describe them, kid."
+
+"How can I, when I never saw them?" said Andy.
+
+Ripley groaned and wrung his hands. He was in a frenzy of distress and
+indecision.
+
+"See here," spoke the officer to him. "You had better go after that
+horse. Your wagon isn't worth fishing up. Got all there was in it, lad?"
+
+"Yes, sir," answered Andy.
+
+"Very well, bundle that bag and those packages in here, and come with
+me. It's good you held on to that registered stuff."
+
+Ripley started after the runaway horse. The officer hurried townwards,
+questioning Andy closely. He stopped at the post-office and made some
+inquiries among the crowd loitering about its vicinity. Then he drove to
+the town hall, went into his office, jumped in the buggy again, and they
+proceeded toward the circus.
+
+"I've got a vague description of your two men," he told Andy, "but that
+isn't much, with so many strangers in town. You think they are partners
+of that Rapp, whom the circus people know?"
+
+"Tapp--Jim Tapp," corrected Andy. "Yes, they mentioned his name."
+
+"The circus detectives ought to handle this case, then," said the
+village officer. "I'd better see them right away."
+
+The manager of the show regarded Andy in some wonderment as he and the
+officer unceremoniously entered his presence. His excitement increased
+as Andy recited his story.
+
+"I warned Ripley," he exclaimed. "Well, he shan't play the spoiled pet
+any longer. As to you, Wildwood, you deserve credit for your pluck. I'll
+have a talk with you when we get to Tipton. Too shaken up to do a little
+general utility work, till I can arrange for something better?"
+
+"Not at all, sir," answered Andy promptly.
+
+Andy saw that he had made a good impression on the manager. The latter
+was pleased with him and interested in him. Andy waited outside the
+tent. Soon the village officer and two of the circus detectives sought
+him out. These latter questioned him on their own behalf.
+
+"Daley, Murdock and Tapp are in this," one of them remarked definitely.
+"They haven't got much, this time. The next break, though, may be for
+the ticket wagon. They've got to be squelched."
+
+Andy put in a busy, pleasant day. He was getting acquainted, he was
+becoming versed in general circus detail.
+
+For an hour he hammered the huge triangle in front of a side show, as
+directed. At the afternoon rehearsal he was one of twenty dressed like
+jockeys in the ring parade.
+
+Afterwards Andy was making for the clown's tent, when a fat, red-faced,
+perspiring fellow, aproned as a cook, hailed him.
+
+"Belong to show?" he asked, waving a frying pan.
+
+"Sure, I do," answered Andy, proudly.
+
+"Help me a little, will you?"
+
+"Glad to. What can I do?"
+
+"Open these lard and butter casks and carry them in. I haven't time.
+There's a hatchet. My stuff is all burning up inside."
+
+A hissing splutter of his ovens made the cook dive into his tent. Andy
+picked up a chisel dropped by the cook. He opened six casks standing on
+the ground and carried them inside.
+
+The cooking odor pervading the place was very pleasing. The cook's
+assistants were few, some of the regulars were absent, Andy guessed from
+what he heard the cook say. The latter was rushed to death, and jumping
+from stove to stove and utensil to utensil in a great flutter of
+excitement and haste for he was behind in his work.
+
+Andy caught on to the situation. In a swift, quiet way he anticipated
+the cook's needs. He dipped and dried some skillets near a trough of
+water. He sharpened some knives. He carried some charcoal hods nearer to
+a stove needing replenishing.
+
+After awhile the cook began to whistle cheerily. His perplexities were
+lessening, and he felt good humored over it.
+
+"Things in running order," he chirped. "You're a game lad. Hold on a
+minute."
+
+The cook emptied out a smoking pan into which he had placed a mass of
+batter a few minutes previous.
+
+"Don't burn yourself--it's piping hot," he observed, tendering Andy a
+tempting raisin cake, enough for two meals.
+
+"Oh, thank you," said Andy.
+
+"Thank you, lad. Whenever you need a bite between meals, just drop in."
+
+Andy came out of the tent passing the cake from hand to hand. He caught
+a newspaper sheet fluttering by, wadded it up, and surmounted it with
+the hot cake.
+
+"That's better," he said. "My, it looks appetizing. Beg pardon," added
+Andy, as rounding a tent he ran against a boy about his own age.
+
+At a glance he saw that the stranger did not belong to the show. He was
+poorly dressed, but clean-faced and bright-eyed, although he limped like
+a person who had walked too far and too long for comfort.
+
+"My fault," said the stranger. "I've done nothing but gape since I came
+here. Say, this circus is a regular city in itself, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes," answered Andy. "Stranger here?"
+
+The boy nodded. He studied Andy's face quite anxiously.
+
+"Look here," he said, "you look honest. Some lemonade boys I asked sent
+me astray with all kinds of wrong information. You won't, will you?"
+
+"Certainly not," said Andy. "What's the trouble?"
+
+"Is it hard to get a talk with the circus manager?"
+
+"Why, no."
+
+"Is it hard to join the show?"
+
+"I have just joined," said Andy.
+
+"Is that so?" exclaimed the stranger, brightening up. "Was it hard to
+get in?"
+
+"Not particularly. What did you expect to do?"
+
+"Anything for a start," responded the other eagerly. "Only, my ambition
+is to be an animal trainer."
+
+Andy became quite interested.
+
+"Why that?" he inquired.
+
+"Because it seems to be my bent. My name is Luke Belding. I'm an orphan.
+Been brought up on a stock farm, and know all about horses. And say,"
+added the speaker with intense eagerness, "if they'll take me on I'll
+throw in a great curiosity."
+
+He held out what looked like a wooden cage covered with a piece of
+water-proof cloth.
+
+"Got it in there, have you?" asked Andy.
+
+"Yes. I've trained it, and it's cute. Honest, it's better as a
+curiosity, and to make people laugh, than a lot of the novelties they
+have in the side, tents."
+
+"Why," said Andy, with increasing interest, "what may it be, now?"
+
+"Well," answered Luke, "it's a chicken."
+
+"Oh. Two-headed, three-legged, I suppose, or something of that sort?"
+
+"Not at all. No," said Luke Belding, "this is something you never saw
+before. It's a chicken that walks backward."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+CALLED TO ACCOUNT
+
+
+Andy burst out laughing,--he could not help it.
+
+"That's strange," he said. "A chicken that walks backward?"
+
+"Yes," answered Luke Belding, soberly.
+
+"Really does it?"
+
+"Oh, sure. All the time. I've got it here. I'll show you."
+
+Luke made a move as if to remove the cloth cover from the box under his
+arm, but Andy stopped him.
+
+"Hold on," he said. "Come with me till I get rid of this cake, and then
+you shall show me."
+
+"H'm!" observed Luke, smacking his lips with a longing look at the cake,
+"it wouldn't take me long to get rid of it!"
+
+"Hungry?" insinuated Andy.
+
+"Desperately. I'd be almost tempted to sell a half-interest in the
+chicken for a good square meal."
+
+"You shall have one without any such sacrifice," declared Andy. "Come
+along."
+
+They found the clown's tent empty.
+
+"Billy Blow is probably giving Midget an airing," said Andy, half to
+himself.
+
+"Who's Billy Blow?" inquired Luke.
+
+"The clown."
+
+"Do you know a real live clown? Say, that's great!" said Luke. "Must
+keep a fellow laughing all the time."
+
+"I thought so until yesterday," answered Andy. "But no--they have their
+troubles, like other people. This poor, sorrowful fellow has his fill of
+it. He don't do much laughing outside of the ring, I can tell you.
+There, we'll enjoy the cook's gift together."
+
+Andy drew up the bench and handed Luke fully three-quarters of the
+toothsome dainty. It pleased him to see the half-famished boy enjoy the
+feast. Luke poked a good-sized piece of the sake under the cage cover.
+There was a gladsome cluck.
+
+"Two of us happy," announced Luke, with a smile that won Andy's heart.
+
+Andy decided that his new acquaintance was the right sort. Luke had a
+clear, honest face, and there was something in his eye that inspired
+confidence.
+
+"Now, then," said Andy, as his companion munched the last crumb of the
+cake, "let's see your wonderful curiosity."
+
+"I'll do it," replied Luke with alacrity. "Find me a little stick or
+switch, will you?"
+
+Andy went outside to hunt for the required article. As he returned with
+a stake splinter he observed that Luke had uncovered and set down the
+cage, which was a rude wooden affair.
+
+Near it, with a pertly cocked head and magnificently red feathers, stood
+a small rooster. Luke took the stick from Andy's hand.
+
+"Walk, Bolivar!" he ordered.
+
+Andy began to laugh. It was a comical sight. The rooster went strutting
+around the tent backwards as rapidly and steadily as a normal chicken.
+It was ludicrous to watch it proceed, pecking at the ground and
+turning corners.
+
+"Now, then, Bolivar!" said Luke.
+
+He used the stick to direct the rooster, which kept time first with one
+foot and then the other to a tune whistled by its owner, ending with a
+triple pirouette that was superb.
+
+"Well, that's fine!" commented Andy with enthusiasm. "How did you ever
+train it?"
+
+"Didn't," responded Luke frankly--"except for the dancing. I've done
+that with crows and goats, many a time. See here," and he picked up the
+chicken and extended its feet.
+
+"Why," cried Andy, "it was born with its claws turned backwards!"
+
+"That's it," nodded Luke. "See? A regular freak of nature. Odd enough to
+put among the curiosities?"
+
+"It certainly is," voted Andy. "The circus wouldn't use it, though--just
+a side show."
+
+"I don't care," said Luke, "as long as I get started in with the show.
+Can you help me?"
+
+"I'll try to," declared Andy. "Wait here. I want to find Billy Blow and
+tell him about this."
+
+Andy went about the circus grounds until he discovered the clown. Billy
+was quite taken with the chicken, and finally decided to try and place
+the boy with his freak.
+
+He and Luke went away together. When he came back the clown was alone.
+He told Andy that one of the side shows had agreed to try Luke and his
+wonderful chicken for at least a week for the food and keep of both.
+
+Andy went on with the jockey riders in the evening performance. The last
+performance at Clifton was the next forenoon. He had only a glimpse of
+Marco and others of his acquaintance meantime, with everything on
+a rush.
+
+"You see, Tipton is a regular vacation for us folks," Billy Blow
+explained to him. "Country around isn't populous enough for more than
+one day's performances, and then only when the county fair is on. We
+rest two days, and play Saturday. Then is your chance. There's a good
+deal of shifting and taking on new hands. We'll watch out for you.
+You'll see some fun, too. All the new aspirants have been told to show
+up at Tipton."
+
+"Are there many?"
+
+"About five to every town we've played in," declared Billy. "They all
+want to break in, and it's policy to give them a show."
+
+Andy was sent off by the manager to the superintendent of the moving
+crew about noon. There was considerable lifting to do. Andy was tired
+when, about six o'clock in the evening, he climbed up on a loaded wagon
+for the well-earned ride to Tipton.
+
+He had met one of the circus detectives that morning, who told him they
+had so far discovered no trace of Jim Tapp, or his colleagues, or the
+stolen mail bag.
+
+They got to Tipton about eight o'clock in the evening. Andy was "told
+off" to help in the construction work the next morning, and had now
+twelve hours of his own time.
+
+He was hungry, and knowing that it would be difficult to get much to eat
+until late, when the cook's quarters had been re-established, he left
+the wagon as it reached the principal street in Tipton.
+
+Andy went to a restaurant and got a good meal. He decided to stroll
+about a bit, and then join the clown in his new quarters.
+
+Andy had been to Tipton before. His aunt had some acquaintances there.
+He walked up and down the principal street, looking in the store
+windows, and studying the country people who had come to visit the
+county fair.
+
+Suddenly Andy drew back into the shadow of a doorway. Leaning against a
+curb hitching post was a person who enchained his attention.
+
+"It's Tapp--Jim Tapp," said Andy. "I'd know that slouch of his shoulders
+anywhere."
+
+The person under his inspection was swinging a light bamboo cane and
+smoking a cigarette. He wore a jet black moustache and a jet black speck
+of a goatee. Moustache and goatee were unmistakably of the variety Andy
+had seen a circus fakir selling for twenty-five cents, back at Clifton.
+
+Their wearer kept his back to the lighted windows, so that his face was
+in partial shadow. He also kept taking sidelong glances up and down the
+curb, as if expecting some one.
+
+Andy watched him for fully five minutes, made up his mind, and at last
+stealthily glided up behind him.
+
+Seizing both the fellow's arms, he whirled him around face to face, let
+go of him, and with two quick movements of one hand tore the false
+moustache and the false goatee from his face. His surmises were correct.
+It was Jim Tapp.
+
+The latter gave Andy a quick, startled glance.
+
+"Wildwood!" he said, and switched his cane towards Andy's face.
+
+"No, you don't!" cried Andy, grasping his arms again. "Jim Tapp, the
+circus people want you."
+
+"Let go. Nobody wants me. I've done nothing."
+
+"Call Benares Brothers, the stake your partner hit me with, the stolen
+mail bag, nothing?" demanded Andy. "You'll come along with me or I'll
+call the police."
+
+Tapp glanced sharply about. So far nobody seemed to particularly notice
+them. He threw out his own arms and grasped Andy in turn. Thus
+interlocked, he threw out a foot. Andy was taken off his guard. He went
+toppling, but he never let go of his antagonist. Both landed with a
+crash on the board sidewalk.
+
+There was a vacant lot just next to a brilliantly lighted store. As they
+took a roll, they landed nearly at the inner edge of the walk.
+
+"There!" panted Andy, "you won't trip me again."
+
+He was the stronger of the two, and got Tapp on his back. Sitting
+astride of him, Andy caught both hands at the wrists.
+
+"Let go!" panted Tapp. "Say, don't draw a crowd. I'll go with you."
+
+"You'll go with a policeman," declared Andy, glancing along the walk.
+"There'll be one here soon, for the crowd's coming."
+
+"Fight! fight!" yelled three or four urchins, dashing up to the spot.
+
+Others came hurrying along from inspecting the store windows.
+
+"What's the row?" demanded a man.
+
+"Fair fight. Let him up. Give him a chance," growled a low-browed
+fellow, also approaching.
+
+"What is it? what is it?" inquired a fussy old lady, craning her neck
+towards the combatants.
+
+"Say," ground out Tapp, vainly endeavoring to free himself, "let me up.
+It will pay you. Say, I can tell you something great."
+
+"Can you?" smiled Andy calmly. "Tell it to the police."
+
+"Hold on," proceeded Tapp. "I'm not fooling. I know something. I can put
+you on to something big."
+
+"How big?" insinuated Andy, disbelievingly.
+
+"I can, I vow I can! I'm in dead earnest. Say, Wildwood, nobody knows it
+but me--you're an heir--"
+
+"Eh? Bosh! I guess your heir is all hot air. Ah, here comes the
+policeman--oh, gracious! My aunt!"
+
+Andy Wildwood let go his hold of Jim Tapp. With startled eyes, in sheer
+dismay he stared at a woman approaching them, her curiosity aroused by
+the crowd.
+
+It was his aunt, Miss Lavinia Talcott.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+ANDY'S ESCAPE
+
+
+Jim Tapp gave a great wriggle as Andy involuntarily let go his hold of
+the young rascal. His ferret-like eyes twinkled and followed the glance
+of Andy's own.
+
+Tapp was too keen a fellow not to observe that Andy was startled and
+unnerved by the unexpected appearance of some one on the scene.
+
+He probably caught the words spoken by Andy: "My aunt," and presumably
+identified Miss Lavinia Talcott as the cause of the boy's disquietude.
+Further, Jim Tapp knew that Andy had run away from home and had been
+sought for by the police. As it turned out later in Andy Wildwood's
+career, Jim Tapp knew a great deal more than all this put together. In
+fact, he knew some things of which Andy never dreamed.
+
+Andy had been completely driven off his balance at the sight of his
+aunt. It was natural that she should be at Tipton. She went there quite
+often. Loneliness at home and the variety of the county fair at Tipton
+had probably induced her to make the present visit.
+
+Instantly Andy thought of but one thing--to escape recognition. Still,
+the minute he let go of Tapp his presence of mind returned, and he was
+sorry he had lost his nerve on an impulse. It would have been quite an
+easy thing to roll and force his antagonist over the sidewalk edge. Now,
+however, Tapp had wriggled past his reach.
+
+Andy made one grab for him, prostrate on the planks now, missed, rolled
+along, and dropped squarely over the inner edge of the walk five feet
+down into the vacant lot below.
+
+"She didn't see me," he panted--"I'm sure she didn't. Too bad, though! I
+had that fellow, Tapp, tight. Why should I lose him, even now?"
+
+Andy ran under the sidewalk for about ten feet. He rounded a heap of
+sand and glided up a slant where an alley cut in. There he paused,
+hidden by a big billboard. Peering past this barrier he could view the
+crowd he had just left.
+
+"Thief--stop thief!" fell in a frantic yell on his hearers.
+
+To his surprise it was Jim Tapp who uttered the call. He was flinging
+about in great excitement. As a police officer ran up, Andy saw him
+pointing into the vacant lot. He also evidently told some specious story
+to the officer.
+
+The latter jumped into the lot, and two or three followed him. Andy saw
+that he was in danger of discovery, and directed a last glance at the
+crowd on the sidewalk. He saw his aunt's bobbing bonnet retreating from
+the scene. He also saw Jim Tapp, apparently following her. He did not
+dare to go in the same direction.
+
+Andy dodged down the alley and came out on the next street. He looked
+vainly for the two persons in whom he was interested. He failed to
+locate them, and then proceeded in the direction of the circus grounds.
+He was very thoughtful, and in a measure worried and uneasy.
+
+"Tapp is pretty smart," soliloquized Andy. "He's mean, too. If he
+noticed that I was flustered and afraid of Aunt Lavinia seeing me, and
+guesses who she is and connects my running away from home with her, he
+would tell her where I am just out of spite. Wonder if she could have me
+arrested here, in another State?"
+
+Andy was too tired to stay awake over this problem when he located the
+clown's new quarters. Before he retired, however, he got word to the
+circus manager that Jim Tapp was evidently following the circus, and had
+been seen in Tipton that very evening.
+
+The next morning Andy was too busy to give the matter of his aunt's near
+proximity much thought. He worked with a gang hoisting the main tent
+until nearly noon.
+
+"Hi, Wildwood!" hailed a friendly voice, as Andy was leaving the cook's
+tent an hour later.
+
+The speaker was Marco. He made a few inquiries as to how Andy was
+getting along. Then he said: "I saw Miss Stella Starr this morning. You
+know the manager, of course?"
+
+"Mr. Scripps--yes," nodded Andy.
+
+"Well, about two o'clock they're going to line up the amateurs in the
+performance tent. You be there."
+
+"All right," said Andy.
+
+"Benares and Thacher will be on hand. You'll see some fun. Afterwards
+they'll put you through some stunts in dead earnest. It's your chance to
+get in on the tumbling act. Would you like that?"
+
+"I should say so--if I can do it good enough."
+
+"Well, try, anyhow. If you're not up to average, Benares will train you.
+He's taken a fancy to you, and he'll help you along. Some of the
+tumblers leave us here, and they're shy on a full number. If they take
+you, stick hard for ten dollars."
+
+"A month?" said Andy.
+
+"No, a week."
+
+"Gracious!" exclaimed Andy, "that's too good to come out true."
+
+"Stick and strive, Wildwood--the motto will win," declared Marco.
+
+When Andy went to the performers' tent at two o'clock, he found over
+fifty persons there. In its centre a balancing bar had been put up. An
+old circus horse stood at one side. Some low trapezes were swung from a
+post. A number of the circus people were lounging on benches in one
+corner of the tent. In another corner on other benches some twenty
+persons, mostly boys, were gathered.
+
+"Here, you're not on show yet," spoke Benares, the trapezist, pulling
+Andy beside him as he passed along. "Your turn will come after they get
+rid of those aspirants yonder."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+A FULL-FLEDGED ACROBAT
+
+
+The circus manager sat in a chair at the edge of a little sawdust ring
+that had been marked out for the occasion. The ringmaster stood near
+him, in charge of the ceremonies.
+
+"Now, then, my friends," observed this individual in a sharp, snappy
+way, "you people want a chance to get on as performers. That's good. We
+are always looking for fresh talent. Show your paces. Who's first?"
+
+A big, loutish fellow with an ungainly walk stepped forward. He was
+wrapped up in a tarpaulin. As he let it drop it was like a
+transformation scene.
+
+It seemed that some of the mischievous candy peddlers had got hold of
+him. They had induced him to appear for trial in costume.
+
+He wore a pair of tights three sizes too small for him. They had
+powdered his hair with fine sawdust and daubed his face with chalk and
+dyes. They had stuffed out his stockings until his calves resembled
+sticks of knotted wood.
+
+The manager nearly fell over in his chair with repressed laughter. The
+audience was one vast chuckle.
+
+"Well, sir," spoke up the ringmaster, with difficulty keeping a straight
+face, "what can you do?"
+
+"I'd like to be a clown," grinned the victim.
+
+"A clown, sir. Good. Let's see you act."
+
+The fellow capered into the ring. One stocking came down, letting out a
+quart of sawdust. One tight split up to the knee as he made a jig step
+that brought the tears to the eyes of Billy Blow, who, with his boy, had
+come to witness the show.
+
+Then the fellow sang a funny song. It was funny. His voice was cracked,
+his delivery dolorous. He began to shuffle at the end of it.
+
+"Faster, faster, sir!" cried the ringmaster, snapping his whip across
+the bare limb exposed. "Faster, I tell you!"
+
+"Ouch!" yelled the aspirant.
+
+"Come, sir, faster. I say faster, faster, faster! Purely ring practice,
+my friend. We do this to all the clowns, you know."
+
+With the pitiless accuracy of a bullwhacker the ringmaster pursued his
+victim. The whip-lash landed squarely every time, biting like a hornet.
+The aspirant was now on the run.
+
+"Stop! Don't! Help!" he roared. "I don't want to be a clown!" and with a
+bellow he ran out of the tent, followed by the hooting candy peddlers.
+
+"Well, who are you?" demanded the ringmaster of two colored boys who
+stepped forward.
+
+"Double trapeze act, sir," said one of them.
+
+"Oh, here you are. Let's see what you can do."
+
+The ringmaster set free the temporary trapeze rigging.
+
+These aspirants did quite well, singly. When they doubled, however,
+there was trouble.
+
+The one swinging from the hands of the other lost his grip. He caught
+out wildly, grabbed at the shirt sleeve of his partner to save himself.
+This tightened the garment at the neck. Then it gave way, buttons and
+all. Both tumbled to the ground. They began upbraiding one another, came
+to blows, and the ringmaster sent them about their business, saying the
+show could not encourage prize fighters.
+
+The programme continued. There was an ambitious lad who was quite a
+wonder at turning rapid cartwheels. Another did some creditable pole
+balancing. One old man wanted to serve as a magician. All had a chance,
+but their merit was not distinguished enough to warrant their
+engagement.
+
+Most of the crowd filed out when the last of the amateurs had done his
+"stunt." Benares then stepped up to the ringmaster and beckoned to Andy.
+
+At his direction Andy threw off his coat and hat, and old Benares led
+the horse Andy had noticed into the main tent. It was a steady-paced,
+slow-going steed. The ringmaster got it started around the ring.
+
+"Do your best now, Wildwood," whispered Marco, who with the clown and
+the manager had followed into the main tent.
+
+Andy was on his mettle. He made a run, took a leap and landed on the
+platform on the horse's back just as he had done a hundred times back
+at Fairview.
+
+"Very good," nodded the ringmaster, as Andy rode around the ring,
+posing, several times.
+
+"Try the spring plank next," suggested the manager.
+
+The single and double somersault were Andy's specialty. The apparatus
+was superb. He was not quite perfect, but old Benares patted him on the
+shoulder after several efforts, with the words:
+
+"Fine--vary fine."
+
+Andy did some creditable twisting on the trapeze, the manager and the
+ringmaster conversing together, meantime.
+
+"Report to me in the morning," said the latter to Andy at last.
+
+Marco followed the manager as he left the tent. He came back with a
+pleased expression of face.
+
+"It's all right, lad," he reported. "You're in the ring group as a sub.
+He tried to chisel me down, but I insisted on fair pay, and it's ten
+dollars a week for you."
+
+Andy was delighted. That amount seemed a small fortune to him. No danger
+now of not being able to pay back to Graham the borrowed five dollars
+and his other Fairview debts.
+
+Benares took him in hand after the others had left. He gave him a great
+many training suggestions. He led him into the regular practicing tent
+and showed him "the mecanique." This was a device with a wooden arm from
+which hung an elastic rope. Harnessed in this, a performer could attempt
+all kinds of contortions without scoring a fall.
+
+Benares also showed Andy how to make effective standing somersaults by
+"the tuck trick," This was to grasp both legs tightly half-way between
+the knees and ankles, pressing them close together. At the same time the
+acrobat was to put the muscles of the shoulders and back in full play.
+The combined muscular force acted like a balance-weight of a wheel, and
+enabled that neat, finished somersault which always brought down
+the house.
+
+"You ought to try the slack wire, too, when you get a chance," advised
+Benares. "We'll try you on the high trapeze in the triple act, some
+time. Glad you're in the profession, Wildwood, and we'll all give you a
+lift when we can."
+
+Andy felt that he had found some of the best friends in the world, and
+was a full-fledged acrobat at last as he left the circus tent.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+AMONG THE CAGES
+
+
+"Hi! Hello--stop, stop."
+
+"Oh, it's you, Luke Belding?"
+
+Andy, passing through the circus grounds, turned at an eager hail. The
+owner of the chicken that walked backwards came running after him. He
+caught Andy's arm and smiled genially into his face.
+
+"Well," spoke Andy, surveying Luke in a pleased way. "You look
+prosperous."
+
+In fact Luke did present signs of a betterment over his first forlorn
+appearance on the circus scene.
+
+He wore a new jacket and a neat collar and necktie. His face had no
+trouble in it now. He presented the appearance of a person eminently
+satisfied with the present and full of hope and animation for
+the future.
+
+"Prosperous?" he declaimed volubly--"I guess I am. Square meals, a sure
+berth for a week, jolly friends--and, oh, say! you're one of the
+true ones."
+
+"Am I?" smiled Andy--"I'm glad to hear you say so."
+
+"Billy Blow is another. He got me on at a side show. They give me my
+keep, ten per cent, on what photographs I sell, and togged me out
+respectable looking, gratis."
+
+"Good for you," commended Andy heartily. "And what of the famous
+chicken?"
+
+"In capital trim. Say, that wise little rooster seems to know he's on
+exhibition. There's some monkeys in our tent. He steals their food,
+fights them, cuts up all kinds of antics. Boss says he thinks he will be
+a drawing card. I've got him to turn a somersault now. Come on."
+
+"Come where?"
+
+"I want to show you. See there. Isn't that grand, now?"
+
+Luke led Andy into the tent where the side show was. A big frame covered
+with cheese cloth took up the entire width of the place. Upon this a man
+with a brush was liberally spreading several quarts of glaring red and
+yellow paint.
+
+"Greatest Curiosity In The World--Remarkable Freak of Nature--The Famous
+Bolivar Trick Rooster, Who Walks Backwards"--so much of the grand
+announcement to the circus public had been already painted on the sign.
+
+"They're bound to give you a chance, anyhow," observed Andy. "And I must
+say I am mighty glad of it."
+
+"And see here," continued Luke animatedly. "Come on, old fellow. Easy,
+now. Ah, he wants a lump of sugar."
+
+Luke had approached a very strongly-built cage.
+
+Its occupant was one of the largest and ugliest-looking monkeys Andy had
+ever seen.
+
+It bristled and snarled at Andy, but as Luke opened the cage door leaped
+into his arms, snuggled there, and began petting his face with one paw.
+
+Luke gave the animal a lump of sugar, coaxed it, stroked it. Then he
+took it over to where an impromptu slack wire was strung between two
+posts, and set the monkey on this.
+
+The animal went through some evolutions that were so perfect an
+imitation of first-class human trapeze performance, that Andy was fairly
+astonished.
+
+"The people here give me great credit on that," announced Luke with
+happy eyes, as he put the monkey back in his cage. "They were just going
+to kill him when I came here"
+
+"Kill him--what for?" asked Andy.
+
+"Oh, he was so savage. He bit off an attendant's finger, and maimed two
+smaller monkeys. He wouldn't do anything but sulk and show his teeth all
+day long. I got at him. When he first grabbed my hand in his teeth I
+just let it stay there. Never tried to get it away or fight him. Just
+looked him in the eyes sort of reproachfully, and began to boo-hoo. Oh,
+I cried artistic, I did. Say, that monkey just stared at me, dropped my
+hand and began to bellow at the top of his voice, too. Then he got sorry
+and licked my hand. A lump of sugar sealed the compact. Why, he's the
+smartest animal in the show. You see what he did for me. The people here
+are delighted. It's made me solid with them."
+
+Luke introduced Andy to the "Wild Man," a most peaceable-looking
+individual out of his acting disguise. His wife was the Fat Woman, who
+did not act as if she was very much afraid of her supposed savage and
+untamable husband.
+
+"I want you to do something for me," said Luke, presently. "Will you?"
+
+"I'll try," answered Andy.
+
+"I'd like to go through the menagerie. You see I'm not regular, so,
+while I have the run of the small tops, they won't pass me in at the
+big flaps."
+
+Andy walked over with his new acquaintance to the menagerie. The
+watchman at the door admitted them at a word from Andy.
+
+The trainers, keepers and manager were busy about the place, feeding the
+animals, cleaning the cages and the like.
+
+Luke's eyes sparkled as if at last he found himself in his element. He
+petted the camels affectionately, and talked to the elephants in a
+purring, winning tone that made more than one of them look at him as if
+pleased at his attention.
+
+The lion cages were Luke's grand centre of interest. He stood watching
+old Sultan, the king of the menagerie, like one entranced.
+
+Luke began talking to the beast in a musical, coaxing tone. The animal
+sat grim as a statue. Luke thrust his hand into his pocket. As he
+withdrew it he rested his fingers on the edge of the cage.
+
+The lion never stirred, but its eyes described a quick, rolling
+movement.
+
+"Look out!" warned Andy--"he's watching you."
+
+"I want him to," answered Luke coolly.
+
+"But--"
+
+Luke continued his animal lullaby, he kept extending his hand. Straight
+up towards the lion's face he raised his arm fearlessly, now inside the
+danger line fully to the elbow.
+
+"Hi! Back! Thunder! He'll eat you alive!" yelled a trainer, discovering
+the lad's venturesome position.
+
+"S-sh. Good old fellow. Purr-rr. So--so."
+
+Old Sultan bristled. Then his corded sinews relaxed. He lowered his
+muzzle. Andy stroked it gently. The animal sniffed and snuffed at his
+hand. He began to lick it.
+
+Just then the trainer ran up. He gave Luke a violent jerk backwards,
+throwing him prostrate in the sawdust. With a frightful roar Sultan
+sprang at the bars of the cage, glaring apparently not at Luke, but at
+the trainer.
+
+"Do you want to lose an arm?" shouted the latter, angrily. "You chump!
+that animal is a man-eater."
+
+"I'm only a boy, though, you see?" said Luke, arising and brushing the
+sawdust from his clothes. "He wouldn't hurt me."
+
+"Wouldn't, eh? Why--"
+
+"He didn't, all the same. Did he, now? Say, mister, I'm a side show
+actor just now, but some day I'll work up to the cages here. Bet you I
+can make friends with your fiercest member."
+
+"Bah! you keep away from those cages."
+
+"How did you dare to do that?" asked Andy, as the boys came out of the
+menagerie.
+
+"Why, I'll tell you," explained Luke. "I love animals, and most times
+they seem to know it. Once a lion tamer summered at our farm on account
+of poor health. He told me a lot of things about his business. One thing
+I tried just now. I've got a lot of fine sugar flavored with anise in my
+pocket. When I tackled Sultan I had my hand covered with it. Any wild
+animal loves the smell of anise. You saw me try it on their champion,
+and it worked, didn't it?"
+
+"You are a strange kind of a fellow, Luke," said Andy studying his
+companion interestedly.
+
+"That so?" smiled Luke. "I don't see why. You fancy tumbling. I'm dead
+gone on the cages. We both have our especial ambitions--say, I haven't
+caught your name yet."
+
+"Andy."
+
+"All right, Andy. Going to use your full name on the circus posters, or
+just Andy?"
+
+"The circus posters are a long way ahead," smiled Andy. "But if I ever
+get that far I think I'll use my right name--Andy Wildwood."
+
+"Eh? What's that? Andy Wildwood!" exclaimed Luke.
+
+Andy was amazed at a sharp start and shout on the part of his companion.
+
+"Why, what now--" he began.
+
+"Andy Wildwood? Andy--Wildwood?" repeated Luke.
+
+He spoke in a retrospective, subdued tone. He tapped his head as if
+trying to awaken some sleeping memory.
+
+"Got it now!" he cried suddenly. "Why, sure, of course. Knew the name in
+a minute."
+
+Luke seized and pulled at a lock of his hair as if it was a sprouting
+idea.
+
+"You came from Fairville," he resumed.
+
+"Fairview."
+
+"Then you're the same. Yes, you must be the fellow--Andy Wildwood, the
+heir."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+FACING THE ENEMY
+
+
+The young acrobat stared hard at Luke Belding. He wondered if the embryo
+lion tamer was crazy--or had he not heard him aright?
+
+Instantly Andy's mind ran back to the encounter with Jim Tapp on the
+streets of Tipton the evening previous.
+
+This made the second time, then, within twenty-four hours that an
+allusion had been made to the fact that he was "an heir."
+
+Andy knew of no reason why a sudden mystery should come into his life.
+The coincidence of the double reference to the same thing, however,
+namely, an alleged heirship, struck him as peculiar.
+
+"Heir," he spoke in a bewildered tone--"me an heir?"
+
+"Yes," said Luke.
+
+"Heir to what?"
+
+"Why--oh, something, I don't know what. But the thing you're heir to is
+there."
+
+"Where?" persisted Andy.
+
+"I don't know that, either--Fairview, I reckon."
+
+"Nonsense. I've got nothing at Fairview excepting a lot of debts. I wish
+you'd explain yourself, Luke. There can't be anything to your absurd
+statement."
+
+"Can't there?" cried Luke excitedly. "Well, you just listen and see--"
+
+"Oh, Wildwood--been looking for you," interrupted some one, just there.
+
+Andy looked up to recognize Marco. The latter nodded to Luke, and
+proceeded to lead Andy away with him.
+
+"Hold on," demurred Luke.
+
+"You'll have to excuse your friend just now," said Marco. "Very
+important, Wildwood," he added.
+
+"What is it, Mr. Marco?" inquired Andy.
+
+Marco showed two folded sheets of writing paper in his hand.
+
+"Your contract with the circus," he explained. "There's a bad hitch in
+this business. Hope to straighten it out, but we'll have to get right at
+it. Come to Billy Blow's tent. I want to have a private talk with you."
+
+Andy traced a seriousness in Marco's manner that oppressed him.
+Instantly all his mind was fixed on the matter of the contracts.
+
+"I'll see you a little later, Luke," he said to his young friend.
+
+"All right," nodded Luke. "I've got a good deal to tell you. But it will
+keep."
+
+When they reached the clown's tent Marco sat down on the bench beside
+Andy.
+
+"Business, Wildwood," he spoke, briskly tapping the papers in his hand.
+"I wanted to get you fixed right, and started right in to get a contract
+from Mr. Scripps."
+
+"Is that it?" asked Andy.
+
+"Yes, and favorable in every way--your end of it, and the circus end is
+all right. But there's another end. That is it. I reckon you'd better
+get the gist of the trouble by reading it over."
+
+Marco separated one of the written sheets and passed it to Andy.
+
+"Oh, dear!" cried the latter in dismay the moment his eyes had taken in
+the general subject matter of the screed before him. "That settles it."
+
+Andy's face ran quickly from consternation to utter gloom.
+
+The document before him was a legally-worded affair awaiting a
+signature. It stated that "Miss Lavinia Talcott, guardian relative of
+Andrew Wildwood, minor, hereby agreed to hold the circus management free
+from any blame, damage or indemnity in case of accident to the said
+Andrew Wildwood, this day and date a contracted employee of said circus
+management."
+
+"She'll never sign it!" cried Andy positively. "How did they come to
+bring her name into this business, anyhow?"
+
+"Hold hard. Don't get excited, Wildwood," advised Marco. "Business is
+business, even if it is unpleasant sometimes. You've got the facts.
+Don't grumble at them. Let's see how we can remedy things."
+
+"They can't be remedied," declared Andy forcibly. "Why, Mr. Marco, I
+wouldn't meet my aunt for a hundred dollars, and I couldn't get her to
+sign any such a paper if it meant a thousand dollars to me."
+
+Marco stroked his chin thoughtfully and in perplexity.
+
+"Then the jig's up," he announced definitely. "You see, Wildwood, we've
+had all kinds of trouble--suits, judgments, injunctions--along of
+fellows getting hurt in the show. One man lost an ear in the
+knife-throwing act. He recovered two thousand dollars damages. Another
+sprained an ankle. Had to pay him eight dollars a week for six months.
+Now they put the clause in the contract holding the circus harmless in
+such matters. Where it's a minor, they insist further that parent or
+guardian also sign off all claims."
+
+"But I have neither," said Andy. "Miss Lavinia is only a half-aunt."
+
+"Well, Miss Starr explained just how matters stood to Mr. Scripps. He
+hasn't got time to quibble over your aunt. Her signature fixes
+it--otherwise you're left out in the cold."
+
+Andy was never so dispirited in all his life. He sat dumb and wretched,
+like a person suddenly finding his house collapsed all about him, and
+himself in the midst of its ruins.
+
+"Look here, Wildwood," said Marco kindly, arising after a reflective
+pause, "you think this thing over. You're a pretty smart young fellow,
+and you'll disappoint me a good deal if you don't find some way out of
+this dilemma."
+
+Andy shook his head doubtfully. He sat dejected and crestfallen for a
+full hour. Then he left the circus grounds, evading friends and
+acquaintances purposely. He went away from the town, reached meadows and
+woods, and finally threw himself down under a great sheltering tree.
+
+Andy thought hard. There was certainly a check to his show career unless
+he secured the sanction and cooperation of his aunt.
+
+Judging from existing circumstances, Andy utterly despaired of moving
+his unlovable, stubborn-minded relative towards any action that would
+favor him. Especially was this true after he had defied her authority
+and run away from home.
+
+"If Mr. Harding's circus won't take me without this restriction, why
+should any other show?" mused Andy. "Oh, dear! Just as things looked so
+bright and hopeful, to have this happen--"
+
+The boy gulped, trying hard to keep back the tears of vexation and
+disappointment. Then he became indignant. He got actually mad as he
+decided that he was a victim of rank injustice.
+
+He arose under the spur of violent varied emotions, pacing the spot
+excitedly, wrestling with the problem that threatened to destroy all his
+fond youthful ambitions.
+
+Gradually his mind cleared. Gradually, too, a better balance came to his
+thoughts. He went logically and seriously over the situation.
+
+Daylight was just going as Andy arrived at a heroic decision.
+
+"There's only one way," he said slowly and firmly. "It looks hopeless,
+but I'm going to try. Yes, make or break, I'm going to face Aunt
+Lavinia boldly."
+
+Andy Wildwood started in the direction of Tipton.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+ANDY'S AUNT
+
+
+Andy went straight to an old dwelling house in a retired part of the
+town.
+
+He had been there twice before when younger, and remembered that an old
+couple named Norman lived there.
+
+The Normans were distant relatives of his Aunt Lavinia. She had other
+acquaintances in Tipton, but, Andy recalled, usually made the Norman
+home her headquarters, paying them some small sum for board and lodging
+whenever she visited them.
+
+The old ramshackly house stood far back from the street. Its front fence
+was broken down, and Andy crossed the lot from the side.
+
+There was no light downstairs except in the kitchen at the rear. An
+upstairs middle room, however, seemed occupied, for chinks of light came
+through the half-closed outside shutters.
+
+The slats of these were turned upwards, to catch light in the daytime
+and shut out a view from street and garden.
+
+Just beneath this window was a door and steps. The latter had nearly
+rotted away, and the door was nailed up and out of use. A framework
+formed of hoop poles rose up from the steps. Once green vines had
+enclosed these. At present, however, only a few dead strands clung to
+the original framework.
+
+The half-open top of this framework was not three feet under the window
+sill of the lighted room. Across it lay some fishing poles and nets,
+also some old garden tools, it apparently being used as a catch-all for
+useless truck about the place for a long time past.
+
+"I'll assume that aunt is in that room," thought Andy, halting near the
+hoop-pole framework and looking up at the window. "She always has the
+middle room here. Yes, she is there, and a man with her. Maybe I'd
+better skirmish around a little, instead of running the risk of being
+nabbed before I can have an explanation. I want a little private talk
+with aunt, alone, if I can get it."
+
+Andy bent his ear. He caught no words, only the sound of human voices.
+His aunt's high, strained tones were unmistakable.
+
+He seized one of the supporting poles of the framework. It rattled and
+quivered, yet he believed it would hold him if he proceeded carefully.
+It was no trick at all for Andy to make a quiet and rapid ascent. He
+perched across the top of the framework and raised his head.
+
+Andy saw his aunt closing up a packed satchel on a chair. She had her
+bonnet on, as if just going out.
+
+At the hallway door was a man taking his leave.
+
+He was excessively polite, hat in hand, and making a most respectful
+bow.
+
+"Well!" commented Andy, fairly aghast.
+
+Andy recognized the man instantly. He was the individual he had seen in
+the hay barn. He was Daley's companion, the man who had "doctored" the
+Benares Brothers' trapeze in the circus at Centreville.
+
+In a flash Andy fancied he understood the situation, the motive of this
+fellow's presence here and now.
+
+"Jim Tapp found out my aunt," theorized Andy rapidly. "He, this fellow,
+and the mail thieves are all in a crowd. Murdock here has probably come
+to tell my aunt that he knows where I am. She may have made a bargain to
+pay him well if he will kidnap me, or in any way get me back to
+Fairview. It's a fine fix to be in!" concluded Andy bitterly.
+
+He was for getting back to the ground, going to the circus, turning in
+the contract, giving up all hopes of show life, and getting to a safe
+distance before his enemies could capture him.
+
+"No, I won't!" resolved Andy a second later, acting on a new impulse.
+"At least, not right away. I'll turn one trick on my enemies, first. The
+circus detectives want this scoundrel, Murdock, bad. I'll get down,
+follow him, and have him arrested the first policeman we meet."
+
+Andy, bent on a descent, paused. Murdock was speaking.
+
+"Are you going back home to Fairview to-night, Miss Talcott?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," snapped Andy's aunt in her usual quick; sharp way.
+
+"Then I will call on you at Fairview."
+
+"If you want to," was the ungracious answer.
+
+"No, no," softly declared the oily rogue--"if you want me to, madam.
+This is your business, Miss Talcott."
+
+"Oh," observed Andy's aunt snappily, "you're working for nothing, I
+suppose?"
+
+"I'm not," frankly answered Murdock. "I'm working for a fee. What I get,
+though, is so small compared with what you may get--"
+
+"Very well," interrupted Miss Lavinia, "when you have this matter in a
+clear, definite shape, I shall be ready to listen to you."
+
+"Good evening, then, madam."
+
+"Evening," retorted Andy's aunt with a curt nod, going on with her
+packing.
+
+Andy rested his hand against the house to get a purchase and leap to the
+ground.
+
+"Pshaw!" he exclaimed abruptly.
+
+One of the hoop poles bent nearly in two, throwing him off his balance.
+
+Andy caught at the window sill, and his body slipped to one side. He
+tried to drop, found himself impeded, and held himself steady,
+looking down.
+
+His rustling about had made something of a racket. As he was seeking to
+determine what had caught and held the side of his coat, one of the
+wooden shutters was thrust violently open.
+
+Its edge struck his head. He dodged aside. Then he sat staring, the full
+light from within the room showing him to its occupant as plain as day.
+
+"Um!" commented Miss Lavinia, simply. "Some one was there. And you, Andy
+Wildwood!"
+
+Andy was taken aback. His aunt was not particularly startled. She rather
+looked stern and suspicious. She did not grab him, or call for help, or
+seem to care whether he came in or stayed out.
+
+"Yes, it's me, Aunt," said Andy, a good deal crestfallen and
+embarrassed. "You see, I wanted to see you--"
+
+"Then why didn't you come like a civilized being! The house has doors.
+Tell me, do you intend to come in?"
+
+"If you please, aunt."
+
+"You may do so."
+
+"Thank you," fluttered Andy.
+
+He now discovered that his coat had caught in half-a-dozen fish hooks
+attached to an eel line all tangled up in the framework. It took him
+fully two minutes to get free. Andy climbed over the window sill and
+stood fumbling his cap. His old awe of his dictatorial relative was as
+strong as ever within him.
+
+"Can't you sit down?" she demanded, sinking to a chair herself and
+facing him steadily. "How long have you been outside there?"
+
+"Only a few minutes," answered Andy.
+
+"Did you see anybody in this room beside myself?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am--a man."
+
+"And eavesdropping, I suppose?" insinuated Miss Lavinia.
+
+"I heard him say 'good night,'"
+
+"Um!" commented Miss Lavinia. That closed the subject for the present.
+She had always known Andy to be a truthful boy, and his reply seemed to
+satisfy her and relieve her mind.
+
+Andy wondered what he had better say first. The fixed, set stare of his
+stern, uncompromising relative made him nervous.
+
+"See here, aunt," he blurted out at last, "I've never seemed to do
+anything right I did for you, and you don't care a snap for me. I don't
+see why you keep hounding me down and wanting me back home."
+
+"I don't."
+
+"Eh?" ejaculated Andy.
+
+"No, I don't," declared Miss Lavinia.
+
+"You don't want me back at Fairview?"
+
+"I said so, didn't I?" snapped Miss Lavinia.
+
+"Then--then--"
+
+"See here, Andy Wildwood," interrupted his aunt in a tone of severity,
+"you have been a disobedient, ungrateful boy. You deserve to be locked
+up. I've tried to have you. I am so satisfied, however, on reflection,
+that you will have a bad ending anyhow, that I have decided to wash my
+hands of you."
+
+"Glory!" uttered Andy to himself, in a vast thrill of delight.
+
+"Have you joined the circus?" continued Miss Lavinia.
+
+"They won't have me--"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Without your sanction. They want you to sign away any claims as to
+damages, if I get hurt. I knew you wouldn't do that."
+
+"You are mistaken, Andy Wildwood--I will do it."
+
+"It's too easy to be true!" breathed Andy, in wild amazement. "You--you
+will sign such a paper?" he stammered.
+
+"Didn't I say so? Let me understand. You wish to cut loose from home and
+friends for good, do you? You don't want to ever return to Fairview?"
+
+"Not till I'm rich and famous," answered Andy.
+
+"H'm! Very well. What have I got to sign?"
+
+"That's it," said Andy, with eager hand drawing a written sheet from his
+pocket.
+
+Miss Lavinia opened the document, read it through, went to the table,
+took a fountain pen from her reticule, signed the paper, returned it
+to Andy.
+
+"I'm dreaming! it's a plot of some kind!" murmured Andy, lost in
+wonderment.
+
+Miss Lavinia took out her pocket-book.
+
+"Andy Wildwood," she said, her harsh features as mask-like as ever,
+"here are ten dollars. It is the last cent I will ever give you. When
+you leave here you sever all ties between us. I have only one
+stipulation to make. You will not disgrace me by having anything to do
+with anybody in Fairview."
+
+"That's all right," said Andy. "I'll agree, except that I've got to
+write to Mr. Graham on business."
+
+"What business?"
+
+Andy explained in full. If he had been more versed in the wiles of the
+world, less astonished at his aunt's strange compliance with his dearest
+wishes, he would have noticed a keen suspiciousness in the glance with
+which she continually regarded him.
+
+"I must insist that you do not write even to Graham," she remarked.
+"About what you owe--I will pay that. Yes, I'll start you out clear. You
+won't write to Graham?"
+
+"No," said Andy slowly--"if you insist on it."
+
+"I will settle the five dollars you owe Graham," promised Miss Lavinia,
+"I will pay the bill of damages at the school and to Farmer Dale, and
+send you the receipts. Does that suit you?"
+
+"Why--yes," answered Andy in a bewildered tone.
+
+"You take that pen and a sheet of paper. Write an order on Graham to
+deliver to me those old family mementos you pawned to him. Also, give me
+your address for a few weeks ahead."
+
+Andy did this.
+
+"And now, good night and good-bye," spoke his aunt. "I hope you'll some
+day see the error of your ways, Andy Wildwood."
+
+Miss Lavinia did not offer to shake hands with Andy. She nodded towards
+the door to dismiss him, as she would have done to a perfect stranger.
+
+"Good-bye, Aunt Lavinia," said Andy. "You're thinking a little hard of
+me. But you've done a big thing in signing that paper, and I'll never do
+anything to make you ashamed of me. Ginger! am I afoot or horseback?
+Permission to join the show! Ten dollars! Oh my head is just whirling!"
+
+These last sentences Andy tittered in a vivid gasp as he went down the
+stairs and once more reached the outer air.
+
+He hurried from the vicinity, fearful that his aunt might change her
+mind and call him back.
+
+"I don't understand it," he mused. "I can't figure it out. That paper
+fixes it so she can't stop me joining the show, nor force me back to
+Fairview. Then what is she having dealings with Murdock for?"
+
+Andy could not solve this puzzle, and did not try to do so any further.
+
+Within an hour the two precious documents were "signed, sealed and
+delivered," and Andy Wildwood entered on his career as a salaried
+circus acrobat.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+A BEAR ON THE RAMPAGE
+
+
+"Hoop-la!"
+
+All a-spangle, to the blare of quick music, the great tent ablaze with
+light, the rows of benches crush-crowded with excited humanity, Andy
+Wildwood left the spring-board. For a second he whirled in midair. Then,
+gracefully landing on the padded carpet, he made his bow amid pleased
+plaudits and rejoined the row of fellow tumblers.
+
+"You've caught the knack," spoke the ringmaster encouragingly. "Be
+careful on the double somersault, though."
+
+"It's just as easy to me," asserted Andy.
+
+He proved his words when his turn came again. He was breathless but all
+aglow, as he and his seven fellow acrobats bowed in a row and retired to
+the performers' tent.
+
+Andy was delighted with himself, his comrades, his
+environment--everything. In fact, a constant glamour of excitement and
+enjoyment had come into his life.
+
+This was the second day after his strange interview with his aunt. It
+was the last evening performance of the show at Tipton.
+
+Andy had been away from the circus for two days. The morning after
+handing in the contracts, the manager had selected him to accompany the
+chief hostler and four of his assistants on a trip into the country.
+
+The show was to make a long jump after closing the engagement at Tipton.
+While Mr. Harding joined a second enterprise he owned in the West, the
+present outfit was to take up a route in the South.
+
+Many of those connected with the show were to leave. This cut the
+working force down. They had too many horses, and with a string of fifty
+of these the chief hostler started out to sell off the same.
+
+The expedition continued a day and a half. When Andy came back, he found
+himself in time for two rehearsals. That evening he made his first
+appearance in public as a real professional.
+
+Outside of the charm of being seen, appreciated and applauded by others,
+Andy loved the vigorous exercise of the spring-board. The mechanical
+athletic and acrobatic equipments of the show were superb. He made up
+his mind he could about live among the balancing bars and trapezes, if
+they would let him.
+
+One disappointment Andy met with that somewhat troubled him. When he
+came back from the horse-selling expedition, he found that Luke Belding
+had left the show.
+
+Billy Blow told Andy that Luke had been to his tent a dozen times to see
+him. That morning early, before Andy's return, the side show Luke was
+with had packed up and shipped by train to join a show going east.
+
+"So I'll never find out what I'm heir to," smiled Andy. "Oh, well, of
+course it was some absurd guess of Luke's. It's funny, though. That
+fellow, Jim Tapp, had the same delusion. By the way, Aunt Lavinia seems
+to have been in earnest. Nobody appears to be looking for me to go back
+to Fairview. I am free to do as I choose. Now, then, to make a record."
+
+Sunday was passed at Tipton. Of the better class in the show, nearly all
+the lady performers and some of the men went to church, and Andy went
+also. In the afternoon Billy Blow went the rounds of some friends, and
+took Andy with him.
+
+It revealed a new phase of circus life, the domestic side, to Andy.
+There was no "shop talk." The boy passed a pleasant hour among several
+very charming family circles.
+
+Next day everybody pitched into genuine hard work. The circus train had
+been sent for, and occupied a long railroad siding.
+
+Andy was amazed at the system and order of the proposed transit. The
+train was on a big scale. The manager had a car to himself. The star
+performers were cared for in luxurious parlor coaches. Even the minor
+employees were well-housed, and feeding arrangements for man and beast
+were perfect.
+
+In order to reach their destination, which was Montgomery, a central
+southern city, the train made many shifts from one railway line to
+another. This took time, and necessitated many unpleasant stoppages
+and waits.
+
+It was the second day of the trip when they were side-tracked at a
+little way station. Here it was given out they would remain from noon
+until midnight, awaiting a fruit express which would pick them up and
+deliver them at terminus.
+
+Billy Blow, his Boy Midget, and Andy had a compartment in a tourists'
+car. When the long stop was announced, Andy was glad to get a chance to
+stretch his limbs.
+
+He interested himself for more than an hour watching the menagerie men
+attend to the animals. They were fed and watered, their quarters neatly
+renovated, while a veterinarian went from cage to cage examining them
+professionally and treating those that were sick or ailing.
+
+Big Bob, the star bear of the show, had in some way run a great sliver
+into one paw. This had festered the flesh, and bruin, bound with stout
+ropes, had been brought out of his cage on a wheeled litter, and laid on
+the grass for careful treatment.
+
+Andy watched the skilful doctoring of the big, bellowing fellow with
+curiosity. Then he strolled off into a stretch of timber to enjoy a
+brief walk.
+
+He reached a deliciously cool and shady nook, and threw himself down at
+the mossy trunk of a tree to rest in the midst of fresh air, peaceful
+solitude and merrily singing birds.
+
+Andy was lost in a soothing day dream when a great rustle made him sit
+up, startled.
+
+A dark object passed close by him in and out among the bushes. It was of
+great size, and was making its way fast and furiously.
+
+"I declare!" cried Andy, springing to his feet, "if it isn't the bear.
+Now how in the world did he get loose?"
+
+Andy stood for a moment staring in wonder after the disappearing animal.
+It was certainly Big Bob. The animal was fully familiar to Andy. The
+beast wobbled to one side as it ran, and this the boy discerned was due
+to the sore paw. He was a fugitive, and his escape had been discovered.
+Andy could surmise this from shouts and calls in the distance, back in
+the direction of the circus train.
+
+Big Bob had a bad reputation with the menagerie men. At times placid and
+even good-natured, on other occasions he was capricious, savage and
+dangerous. Even his trainer had narrowly escaped a death blow from one
+of the animal's enormous paws when the brute was in one of its tantrums.
+
+The bear was lumbering along as if bent on getting a good start against
+pursuit. He chose a sheltered route as if instinctively cunning. Andy,
+acting on a quick impulse, started after the bear.
+
+The route led up a hill. Big Bob scaled a moderately steep incline and
+disappeared over its crest.
+
+Andy, reaching this, glanced backwards. From that height he could look
+well over the country.
+
+The belated train was in sight. From it, armed with pikes and ropes, a
+dozen or more menagerie men were running.
+
+The alarm had spread to the settlement of houses near by. Andy saw
+several men armed with shotguns and rifles scouring adjacent wood
+stretches.
+
+"I won't dare to tackle the bear, but I'll try and run him down till he
+gets tired," thought Andy.
+
+He remembered many a discussion of the menagerie men over the real
+danger and loss involved in the escape of an animal. The fugitive rarely
+did much damage except to hen roosts, beyond scaring human beings. The
+trouble was that armed farmers, pursuing, thought it great sport to
+bring down the fugitive with a shot. Big Bob was worth a good deal of
+money to the show. The principal aim of the menagerie men, therefore,
+was to prevent the slaughter of an escaped animal.
+
+Down the hill bruin ran and Andy after him. Then there was a country
+road and Big Bob put down this. Andy could easily outrun the fugitive,
+but this was not his policy for the present. The disabled foot of the
+animal diminished his normal speed. Andy believed that bruin would soon
+find and harbor himself in some cozy nook.
+
+At a turn in the road Andy noticed that there was a house a few hundred
+feet ahead. Beyond this several other dwellings were scattered about the
+landscape.
+
+"I don't like that," mused Andy. "It may mean trouble. I'd rather see
+the old scamp take to the open country. Wonder if I can head him off?"
+
+Andy leaped a field fence. He doubled his pace, got even with Big Bob,
+then ahead of him. He snatched up a pitchfork lying across a heap of
+hay, and bolted over the fence to the road again.
+
+Extending the implement, he stood ready to challenge the approaching
+fugitive, and, if possible, turn bruin's course.
+
+Big Bob did not appear to notice Andy until about fifty feet distant
+from him. Then the animal lifted his shaggy head. His eyes glared, his
+collar bristled.
+
+With a deep, menacing roar the bear increased his speed. He headed
+defiantly for the pronged barrier which Andy extended. Big Bob ran
+squarely upon the pitchfork. Its prongs grazed the animal's breast.
+
+Andy experienced a shock. He was forced back, thrown flat, and the next
+minute picked himself up from the shallow ditch at the side of the road
+into which he had fallen.
+
+"Well," commented Andy, staring down the road, "he's a good one!"
+
+Big Bob had never stopped. He was putting ahead for dear life. Andy
+watched him near the farm house.
+
+The animal turned in at a road gateway. He ran rapidly up to an open
+window at the side of the house.
+
+Its sill held something, Andy could not precisely make out what at the
+distance he was from the spot. He fancied, however, that it was dishes
+holding pies or some other food, put out to cool.
+
+Big Bob arose erect on his hind legs, his fore feet rested on the window
+sill. His great muzzle dipped into whatever it held.
+
+At that moment from inside the farmhouse there rang out the most
+curdling yell Andy Wildwood had ever heard.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+A CLEVER RUSE
+
+
+The boy acrobat scrambled up from the roadside ditch, seized the
+pitchfork, and dashed along in the direction Big Bob had taken.
+
+A glance showed the audacious animal still at the window of the
+farmhouse, though now under it.
+
+Bruin had swept the contents of the window sill to the ground with one
+movement of his great paw. He was now discussing the merits of the
+dishes he had dislodged with a crash.
+
+Andy ran around to the other side of the house. From within occasional
+hysterical shrieks issued. They were mingled with distracted sobs. At
+another open window Andy halted.
+
+He could look into a middle apartment crossing the entire house.
+Crouching in a corner was a young woman. Her eyes were fixed in terror
+on the window at which the bear had appeared.
+
+In her arms was a child, crying in affright. An older woman stood at a
+telephone, twisting its call bell handle frantically.
+
+"Don't be afraid," said Andy. "It's a harmless old bear escaped from the
+circus down at the tracks."
+
+The two women regarded him mutely, too scared to believe him. Andy heard
+the telephone bell ring.
+
+"Quick! quick!" cried the woman at the instrument. "Send help. A big
+bear! We'll be devoured alive!"
+
+"No you won't," declared Andy in a shout, making around the house.
+
+He hardly knew what to do next, but he kept his eyes open. He hoped for
+some discovery among the truck littering the yard that would suggest a
+way of getting Big Bob again on the run.
+
+"Capital--the very thing," cried Andy suddenly.
+
+He dropped the pitchfork and whipped out his pocket knife. In two
+seconds he had severed a forty-foot stretch of clothes line running from
+a hook on the house to a post.
+
+Then Andy ran to the kitchen door. Hanging at its side was a big piece
+of raw beef.
+
+It was evidently from an animal recently slaughtered, for it was still
+moist and dripping. Andy tightly secured one end of the clothes line
+about it. He ran to the side of the house.
+
+Big Bob was just finishing a repast on some apple pie. Andy gave the
+meat a fling. It struck the bear in the face. Big Bob raised his head.
+He sniffed and licked his lips. He made an eager, hungry spring for the
+meat, which had rebounded several feet.
+
+"Come on," said Andy, sure now that his bait was a good one, and that
+his experiment would succeed. "I've got you, I guess."
+
+Andy started on a run, paying out the rope. Just as Big Bob was about to
+pounce upon the toothsome spoil, Andy gave it a jerk.
+
+He gauged his rate of progress on a close estimate. Along the trail sped
+bruin. Andy put across the fields.
+
+He heard a bell ring out. Glancing back at the farmhouse, he saw a human
+arm reaching through an open window. It pulled at a rope leading to a
+big alarm bell hanging from the eaves. Looking beyond the farmhouse he
+also saw three or four men in a distant field, summoned by the bell, now
+rushing in its direction.
+
+"I'll get Big Bob beyond the danger line, anyhow," decided Andy. "No,
+you don't!"
+
+The fugitive had pounced fairly on the dragging beef. Andy gave it a
+whirling jerk. Bruin uttered a baffled growl.
+
+"Come on," laughed Andy. "This is jolly fun--if it doesn't end in a
+tragedy."
+
+Andy ran under the bottom rail of a fence. He made time and distance,
+for the bear did not squeeze through so readily. Andy put through a
+brushy reach beyond. Big Bob began to lag. He limped and panted.
+
+"If I can only tucker him out," thought Andy.
+
+He kept up the race for fully half-an-hour. As he reached the edge of a
+boggy stretch, Andy saw, directly beyond, the top of a house poking up
+among a grove of fir trees.
+
+Andy's eyes were everywhere as he neared the building. Its lower part
+was so tightly shuttered and closed up that he decided at once it was an
+empty house.
+
+Getting nearer, however, he discovered that the door at the bottom of
+the stone cellar steps was open. Andy glanced back of him. Big Bob, with
+lolling tongue, was lumbering steadily on his track, perhaps twenty feet
+to the rear.
+
+"I'll try it," determined Andy.
+
+He ran down the steps, halted in the dark cellar, pulled in the meat and
+flung it ahead of him. Then stepping to one side he prepared to act
+promptly when the right moment arrived.
+
+Big Bob came to the steps, cleared them in a spring and ran past Andy.
+The latter dodged outside in a flash. He banged the door shut, shot its
+bolt, sank to the steps and swept his hand over his dripping brow.
+
+"Whew!" panted Andy. "But I've made it."
+
+Andy felt that he had done a pretty clever thing. He had gotten the
+fugitive safely caged behind a stout locked door. The cellar had several
+windows, but they were high up, and too small for Big Bob to ever
+squeeze through.
+
+"I don't believe there is anybody at home," said Andy, getting up to
+investigate. "I'm going to find out. Gracious! I have--there is."
+
+Andy was terribly startled, almost appalled. At just that moment a
+frightful yell rang out. It proceeded from the cellar into which he had
+locked the bear.
+
+A sharp crash followed. Andy, staring spellbound, saw one of the side
+windows of the cellar dashed out.
+
+Through the aperture, immediately following, there clambered a man.
+
+He was hatless, a big red streak crossed his cheek, his coat was in
+ribbons down the back.
+
+White as a sheet, chattering and trembling, he scrambled to his feet,
+gave one affrighted glance back of him, and shot for the road like
+a meteor.
+
+Bang! bang! bang!
+
+"Oh, dear!" cried the distressed Andy. "What's up now?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+A ROYAL REWARD
+
+
+Bang! bang!
+
+Five sharp reports rang out from the cellar. Then came a roar from Big
+Bob. Then a second frantic man appeared at the smashed window.
+
+One sleeve was in ribbons. He carried a smoking pistol. Without ado,
+like his predecessor he ran for the road. Glancing thither, Andy saw the
+two running down it, one after the other, like mad.
+
+Andy hardly knew what to make of it all. The two men did not look like
+farmers. He went around the house, and hammered at the front door. No
+response. Every window on the lower floor was tightly shuttered.
+
+Finally he came back to the smashed window. At first he could see
+nothing much beyond it. Then, his eyes becoming accustomed to the
+darkness, he was able to make out the cellar interior quite clearly.
+
+His anxiety as to Big Bob was immediately relieved. If five bullets had
+been fired at the bear, they had made no more impression than peas from
+a putty blower. The serene old animal was leisurely devouring the juicy
+bait that had lured him to his present prison.
+
+"He's safe for a time, anyhow," decided Andy. "I can't quite make out
+the situation here. It looks to me as if those two men don't exactly fit
+to the premises. They are certainly not farmers, nor tramps. Maybe they
+had sneaked in the cellar for a nap, or to steal, leaving the door open,
+and Big Bob tackled them."
+
+Andy made further unsuccessful efforts to arouse the house. He was sure
+now that there was nobody at home. He sat down on its front steps
+to think.
+
+Finally he noticed that a wire ran from the barb wire fence in front
+into the house.
+
+"They've got a telephone here, as they have at most of these
+farmhouses," he decided. "That ought to help me out. If I could only get
+to the inside."
+
+Andy took another rambling tour about the house. Finally he discovered a
+window an inch or two down from the top in the second story.
+
+His natural aptitude for climbing helped him out. With the aid of a
+lightning rod he soon reached the window, lowered it further, stepped
+into a bedroom, and descended a pair of stairs. Looking around the
+little front hall, he made out a telephone instrument on the
+outside wall.
+
+Andy promptly turned the handle of the call bell. He placed the receiver
+to his ear.
+
+"Hello," came the instantaneous response "this is Central."
+
+"Central--where?" asked Andy.
+
+"Brownville."
+
+"Are you anywhere near the way station where the circus train is
+sidetracked?" inquired Andy.
+
+"Certainly. We're the station town."
+
+"Can you reach any of the circus folks?"
+
+"Reach them?" responded the distant telephone operator animatedly. "The
+woods are full of them. They say the whole menagerie has escaped, and
+they're hunting for the animals everywhere. What do you want?"
+
+"I want to talk with some one connected with the show--and--quick."
+
+"All right I've just got to call to the street. Wait a minute."
+
+Soon a new voice came over the telephone: "Hello."
+
+"Who is that?" asked Andy promptly.
+
+"Brophy."
+
+"Oh, the chief hostler? Say, Mr. Brophy, this is Andy Wildwood."
+
+"The acrobat?--where are you?"
+
+"Tumbler, yes. Listen: I've found and caged Big Bob."
+
+"What's that?--Say, where?"
+
+Even over the wire Andy could discern that the man at the other end of
+the line was manifestly stirred up.
+
+"Let me tell you," spoke Andy. "I've got the animal shut up in a cellar.
+For how long or how safe, I can't tell. You had better tell the trainer,
+and get some people here with the things to secure the bear."
+
+"I'll do it," called back Brophy. "Try and keep those crazy farmers from
+finding him. There's a hundred of them out gunning."
+
+"All right. Listen."
+
+Andy described his present location. He wound up by saying he would stay
+within call--- telephone 26--until the capturing crew put in an
+appearance.
+
+Andy sat down in an easy chair in the hall a good deal satisfied with
+himself. However, he felt a trifle squeamish at the thought of the
+tenant of the premises returning and finding him there.
+
+A growling grunt came to his ears. Andy, tracing it, came to an open
+doorway leading down under the front stairs to the cellar.
+
+This he closed and locked, although he saw that the stairs were too
+crooked and narrow to admit of Big Bob ascending to the upper portion of
+the house.
+
+Andy simply rested. There was no further call on the telephone. Finally
+he arose abruptly to his feet.
+
+The sound of wagon wheels came from the front of the house. A minute
+later footsteps echoed on the steps. A key grated in the front door
+lock. The door swung open.
+
+"Hi--Hello! Who are you?" sang out a brusque, challenging voice.
+
+The minute the newcomer entered the hall his eyes fell on Andy. They
+became filled with dark suspicion. He was a powerfully-built,
+intellectual-looking man. Andy believed he was the proprietor of the
+premises, although he did not resemble a farmer.
+
+This man kicked the door shut behind him. He made a pounce on Andy and
+grabbed his arm.
+
+"Let me explain "--began Andy.
+
+"How did you get in here?" retorted the man, his brow darkening.
+
+"By an open window--I was waiting--"
+
+"Let's have a closer look at you," interrupted the newcomer.
+
+Dragging Andy with him, the speaker threw open the parlor door. That
+room was lighter, but as he crossed its threshold he uttered a
+wild shout.
+
+He stood spellbound, staring about the apartment. Andy stared, too.
+
+The room was in dire disorder. A cabinet had all its drawers out. The
+floor was littered with their former contents.
+
+A stout tin box was overturned, its fastenings were all wrenched apart.
+
+"Robbed!" gasped the man. "Ha, I see--you are a burglar," he continued,
+turning fiercely on the astonished youth.
+
+"Not me," dissented Andy vigorously.
+
+"Yes, you are. All my coins and curios gone! Why, you young thief--"
+
+"Hold on," interrupted Andy, resisting the savage jerk of his captor.
+"Don't you abuse me till you know who I am. Yes, your place has been
+burglarized--I see that, now."
+
+"Oh, do you?" sneered the man. "Thanks."
+
+"Yes, sir. I saw two men come out of the cellar here an hour ago. I
+didn't understand then, but I do now."
+
+"From the cellar? Well, we'll investigate the cellar."
+
+"Better not," advised Andy. "At least, not just yet."
+
+"Well, you're a cool one! Why not?"
+
+"Because there's a bear down there."
+
+"A what?" cried the man, incredulously.
+
+"A bear escaped from the circus. Say, I just thought of it. Have the
+burglars taken much?"
+
+"Oh, you're innocent aren't you?" flared out the man.
+
+"I certainly am," answered Andy calmly.
+
+"Did they take much? My hobby is rare coins. With the missing curios, I
+guess they've got about two thousand dollars' worth."
+
+"Would the stuff make quite a bundle?" asked Andy.
+
+"With the curios--I guess! Five pound candlesticks. Two large silver
+servers. The coins were set on metal squares, and would make bulk
+and weight."
+
+"I have an idea--" began Andy. "No, let me explain first. Please listen,
+sir. You will think differently about me when I tell you my story."
+
+"Go ahead," growled his captor.
+
+Andy recited his chase of the bear and its denouement. Then he added:
+
+"If those two men were the burglars, they got in by way of the cellar.
+They came out through the cellar window. I theorize they came down into
+the cellar with their plunder. They disturbed the bear, and Big Bob went
+for them. When I saw them they were empty-handed. I'll bet they dropped
+their booty in their wild rush for escape."
+
+"Eh? I hope so. Let's find out."
+
+The man appeared to believe Andy. He released his hold on him. Just as
+they came out on the front porch Andy spoke up:
+
+"There are the circus people. They'll soon fix Mr. Bear."
+
+A boxed wagon had driven from the road into the yard. It held six men.
+The chief animal trainer jumped down from the vehicle, followed by the
+head hostler. Four subordinates followed, carrying ropes, muzzles,
+pikes, and one of them a stick having on its end a big round cork filled
+with fine needles.
+
+"I'm glad you've come," said Andy, running forward to meet them. "Big
+Bob is in there," he explained to the trainer, pointing to the cellar.
+
+"You're a good one, Wildwood," commended the trainer in an approving
+tone. "How did you ever work it?"
+
+Andy explained, while the trainer selected a muzzle for the bear and
+armed himself with the needle-pointed device. Then he went to the
+cellar door.
+
+"Shut it quick after me," he said. "Come when I call."
+
+Andy ran around to the broken window as soon as the trainer was inside
+the cellar.
+
+He watched the man approach Big Bob. The bear snarled, made a stand, and
+showed his teeth.
+
+One punch of the needle-pointed device across his nostrils sent him
+bellowing. A second on one ear brought him to the floor. The trainer
+pounced on him and adjusted the muzzle over his head. Then he deftly
+whipped some hobbles on his front paws.
+
+He yelled to his assistants. They hurried into the cellar and soon
+emerged, dragging Big Bob after them.
+
+The owner of the place had stood by watching these proceedings silently.
+While the others dragged the bear to the boxed wagon the trainer
+approached him.
+
+"If there's any bill for damages, just name it," he spoke.
+
+"I'll tell you that mighty soon," answered the man.
+
+He dashed into the cellar and Andy heard him utter a glad shout. He came
+out carrying two old satchels. Throwing them on the ground he
+opened them.
+
+They were filled with coins and curios. The man ran these over eagerly.
+He looked up with a face supremely satisfied.
+
+"Not a cent," he cried heartily. "No, no--no damages. Glad to have
+served you."
+
+"All right. Come on, Wildwood," said the trainer, starting for the
+wagon.
+
+"One minute," interrupted the owner of the place, beckoning to Andy.
+
+He drew out his wallet, fingered over some bank bills, selected one, and
+grasped Andy's hand warmly.
+
+"You have done me a vast service," he declared. "But for you--"
+
+"And the bear," suggested Andy, with a smile.
+
+"All right," nodded the man, "only, the bear can't spend money. You can.
+I misjudged you. Let me make it right. Take that."
+
+He released his grasp of Andy's hand momentarily, to slap into his palm
+a banknote.
+
+"Now, look here--" began Andy, modestly.
+
+"No, you look there!" cried the man, pushing Andy towards the wagon.
+"Good bye and good luck."
+
+Andy ran and jumped to the top of the wagon, which had just started up.
+
+Settling himself comfortably, he took a look at the banknote. His eyes
+started, and a flush of surprise crossed his face.
+
+It was a fifty dollar bill.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+"HEY, RUBE!"
+
+
+"From bad to worse," said the Man With the Iron Jaw.
+
+"Correct, Marco," assented Billy Blow dejectedly.
+
+It was three weeks after the start of the southern tour of the circus.
+
+Marco, the clown, Midget, Miss Stella Starr, Andy and about a dozen
+others were seated or strolling around the performers' tent about the
+middle of the afternoon.
+
+Every face in the crowd looked anxious--some disheartened and desperate.
+
+Bad luck attended the southern trip of the show. They had reached
+Montgomery in the midst of a terrific rain storm. Two animal cars had
+been derailed and wrecked on the route.
+
+Three days later a wind storm nearly tore the main top to tatters. Some
+of the performers fell sick, due to the change of climate. Others
+foresaw trouble, and joined other shows in the north.
+
+The season started out badly and kept it up. The attendance as they left
+the big cities was disastrously light.
+
+They had to cut out one or two towns here and there, on account of bad
+roads and accidents. Now the show had reached Lacon, and after more
+trouble found itself stalled.
+
+To be "stalled," Andy had learned was to be very nearly stranded. No
+salaries had been paid for a full fortnight. Some of the performers had
+gotten out executions against the show.
+
+Aside from this, on account of the absence of many attractions
+advertised in the show bills, disappointed audiences were showing an
+ugly spirit.
+
+The show was tied up by local creditors, who would not allow it to leave
+town until their bills were paid.
+
+To make matters worse, Sim Dewey, the treasurer of the show, had run
+away with eleven thousand dollars two days before.
+
+This comprised the active capital of the show. Not a trace of the
+whereabouts of the mean thief had been discovered.
+
+All these facts were known to the performers, and over the same they
+were brooding that dismal rainy afternoon, awaiting the coming of
+the manager.
+
+"Here he is," spoke an eager voice, and Mr. Scripps bustled into the
+tent.
+
+He rubbed his hands briskly and smiled at everybody, but Andy saw that
+this was all put on. Lines of care and anxiety showed about the plucky
+manager's eyes and lips.
+
+"Well, my friends," he spoke at once. "We've arrived at a decision."
+
+"Good," commented Marco. "Let's have it."
+
+"I have had a talk with the lawyers who hold the executions against the
+show, I have suggested four nights and two matinees at half-price,
+papering four counties liberally. We'll announce only the attractions we
+really have, so there can be no kicking. What is taken in the treasurer
+is to hand over to the sheriff. He is to pay fifty per cent on claims
+against us. The balance, minus expenses, is to go for salaries. I should
+say that we can pay each performer a full half salary. There's the
+situation, friends. What do you say?"
+
+"Satisfactory," nodded Marco.
+
+"Billy Blow?"
+
+"I've got pretty heavy expenses, with a wife in the hospital," said the
+clown in a subdued tone, "but I'll try and make half salary do."
+
+"Miss Starr?"
+
+The kind-hearted equestrienne smiled brightly.
+
+"Take care of the others first, Mr. Scripps," she said. "While I have
+these, we won't exactly starve."
+
+Miss Stella Starr shook the glittering diamond pendants in her pretty
+pink ears.
+
+"Thank you," bowed the manager, choking up a trifle. "Andy Wildwood?"
+
+"I'm a mere speck in the show," said Andy, "but I'll stick if there
+isn't a cent of salary. It's the last ditch for my good, true friends,
+Mr. Scripps."
+
+The manager turned aside to hide his emotion.
+
+"Friends," he resumed an instant later, "you break me all up with this
+kind of talk. You're a royal, good lot. I've wired Mr. Harding that he
+must help us out. Stick to your posts, and no one shall lose a dollar."
+
+There was not a dissent to his proposition as he completed calling the
+list of performers. Andy's action shamed some into coming into the
+arrangements. The manager's words encouraged others. While some few
+answered grudgingly, the compact was made unanimous.
+
+"There's a crowd of hard roughs trying to make trouble," concluded Mr.
+Scripps. "Leave that to the tent men. Give the best show you know how,
+try and please the crowds, and I guess we'll win out."
+
+Every act went excellently at the evening performance up to about the
+middle of the programme.
+
+Andy did his level best. He won an encore by a trick somersault old
+Benares had taught him.
+
+Billy Blow was at his funniest. He had the audience in fine, good humor.
+Little Midget over-exerted himself to follow in his father's lead.
+
+Marco was a pronounced success. Miss Stella Starr made one of her horses
+dance a graceful round to the tune of "Dixie," and the audience
+went wild.
+
+Andy, in street dress, came into the canvas passageway near the
+orchestra as the trick elephants were led into the ring. The manager
+nodded to him. Andy saw that he was pleased the way things were going.
+
+For all that, he observed that Mr. Scripps kept his eye pretty closely
+on a rough crowd occupying seats near the entrance.
+
+They seemed to be of a general group. They talked loudly and passed all
+kinds of comments on the various acts.
+
+Finally one of their number shied a carrot into the ring, striking the
+elephant trainer.
+
+The latter caught his cue instantly at a word from the ringmaster. He
+picked up the vegetable, made a profound bow to the sender, juggled it
+cleverly with his training wand, one-two-three, and turned the tables
+completely as the smart baby elephant caught it on the fly.
+
+Cat calls rang out derisively from a lot of boys, directed at the group
+of rowdies from the midst of whom the carrot had been thrown.
+
+Then a man arose unsteadily from that mob and stumbled over the ring
+ropes.
+
+The ringmaster, his face very stern and very white, stepped forward to
+intercept him.
+
+"What do you want?" he demanded.
+
+"Man insulted me. Going to lick him," hiccoughed the rowdy, his eyes
+fixed on the elephant trainer.
+
+"Leave the ring," ordered the ringmaster.
+
+"Me? Guess not! Will I, boys?" he demanded of his special crowd of
+cronies.
+
+"No, no! Go on! Have it out!"
+
+A good many timid ones arose from their seats. The ringmaster scented
+trouble.
+
+Stepping squarely up to the drunken loafer, his hand shot out in a flash
+and caught the fellow squarely under the jaw. He knocked him five feet
+across the ropes, where he landed like a clod of earth in a heap.
+
+Instantly there was an uproar. The orchestra stopped playing. The
+manager ran forward and put up his hand.
+
+"We will have order here at any cost," he shouted. "Officer," to the
+guard at the entrance, "call the police."
+
+With wild yells some fifty of the group from which the drunken rowdy had
+come sprang from the benches. They jumped over the ropes, crowding into
+the ring and making for the manager.
+
+Half-a-dozen ring men ran forward to repel them. Fists brandished, and
+cudgels, too. The circus men went down among flying heels.
+
+Then arose a cry, heard for the first time by the excited Andy--never
+later recalled without a thrill as he realized from that experience its
+terrific portent.
+
+"_Hey, Rube_!"
+
+It was the world-wide rallying cry of the circus folk--the call in
+distress for speedy, reliant help.
+
+As if by magic the echoes took up the call. Andy heard them respond from
+the farthest haunts of the circus grounds.
+
+From under the benches, through the main entrance, under the loose side
+flaps, a rallying army sprang into being.
+
+Stake men, wagon men, cooks, hostlers, candy butchers, came flying from
+every direction.
+
+Every one of them had found a weapon--a stake. Like skilled soldiers
+they grouped, and bore down on the intruders like an avalanche.
+
+Women were shrieking, fainting on the benches, children were crying. The
+audience was in a wild turmoil. Some benches broke down. The scene was
+one of riotous confusion.
+
+Suddenly a shot rang out. Then Andy had a final sight of crashing clubs
+and mad, bleeding faces, as some one pulled the centre-light rope. The
+big chandelier came down with a crash, precipitating the tent in
+semi-darkness.
+
+So excited was Andy, that, grasping a stake, he was about to dash into
+the midst of the conflict. The manager pushed him back.
+
+"Get out of this," he ordered quickly. "Look to the women and children.
+Our men will see to it that those low loafers get all they came for."
+
+"Wildwood," spoke Marco rushing up to Andy just here, "they have cut the
+guy ropes of the performers' tent. I must get to my family. Look out for
+Miss Starr. Here she is."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+A FREE TROLLEY RIDE
+
+
+The young acrobat turned in time to see the performers' tent wobble
+inwards. Miss Starr, quite flustered, ran rapidly to escape being caught
+in its drooping folds.
+
+Following her, looking worn out and anxious, carrying Midget in his
+arms, was Billy Blow.
+
+"Get them out of this!" cried Marco, holding up the flap of the canvas
+passage way.
+
+"Here, let me take him," directed Andy. "You're not equal to the heavy
+load."
+
+He removed Midget from the clown's arms, and led the way to the outer
+air.
+
+Yells and shots sounded from the main tent. Outside there was a swaying,
+excited mob. Andy evaded them, leading the way to the street lining the
+circus grounds at one side.
+
+"Look there," suddenly exclaimed the clown in a gasping tone.
+
+The main tent was on fire. A mob was trying to pull down the menagerie
+tent.
+
+"Hi!" yelled the leader of a gang of boys rushing past them and halting,
+"here's some show folks."
+
+"Pelt them!" cried another voice. "They won't pay my father his feed
+bill."
+
+An egg flittered towards the fugitives. It struck Miss Starr on the
+back, soiling her pretty dress.
+
+Andy ran back, Midget held on one arm. He let drive with his free hand
+and knocked the egg thrower head over heels.
+
+This was the signal for a wild riot. The crowd of young hoodlums pressed
+close on Andy, and he retreated to the others.
+
+"Take him, Miss Starr," he said quickly, placing Midget in her arms.
+"Hurry to the lighted street yonder."
+
+A rain of stones came towards them. Andy ran back at the crowd. In turn
+he sent four of them reeling with vigorous fisticuffs. Then he rejoined
+his friends.
+
+A trolley car stood at one side of the street. The boys had yelled for
+help from others of their kind and their numbers increased dangerously.
+The motorman of the trolley car had neglected his duty and joined a
+gaping crowd at a corner. Riot and enmity to the circus people was in
+the air. Andy formed a speedy decision.
+
+"Quick!" he ordered, "get into that car."
+
+A brickbat knocked off his hat. A second smashed a window in the car as
+Miss Starr and the others got aboard.
+
+Two big fellows pounced upon Andy. He met one with a blow that laid him
+flat. With a trick leap he landed his feet against the stomach of the
+other, sending him reeling back, breathless.
+
+Andy made a jump over the front railing of the car. Another deluge of
+missiles struck the car. He noticed that his friends were safely aboard.
+Andy noticed, too, that the crank handle of the motor box was in place.
+
+"Anywhere for safety from that mob," he thought.
+
+Grr-rr-whiz-z! The car started up. Shouts, missiles, running forms
+pursued it. Andy stopped for nothing. He put on full speed.
+
+As he turned a sharp corner, Andy caught sight of a mass of light flames
+shooting upward. A crowd was in pursuit of the car. Shouts, shots and
+the roars of the animals in the menagerie caused a wild din. His
+inclinations lured him back to the scene of the excitement. His duty,
+however, seemed plain; to follow out Marco's instructions and convey his
+charges to a place of safety.
+
+At a cross street some one hailed the car. Andy simply shot ahead the
+faster. Soon they reached the limits of the town. Andy bent his ear, and
+caught the distant clang of the trolley wagon.
+
+He had stolen a car, and they were in pursuit. The general temper was
+adverse to the circus folks. Andy kept the car going.
+
+Miss Starr came to the front door of the car and stepped out on the
+platform beside Andy.
+
+"Brave boy," she said simply.
+
+"Miss Starr, what are your plans?" he asked.
+
+"Anything to get away from this horrid town," she said. "I am not afraid
+but what our tent men will teach that mob a lesson. They always do, in
+these riots. I have seen a dozen of them in my time. The police, too,
+will finally restore order. As to the show, though--the southern trip
+is over."
+
+"Then you don't want to go back to Lacon?"
+
+"Why should we? Our traps are probably burned, or stolen. If not, they
+will be sent on to us on direction. The show can't possibly survive.
+Billy and his boy couldn't stand the strain of any more trouble. No,"
+sighed the equestrienne, "it is plain that we must seek another
+position."
+
+Andy again heard the gong of the repair wagon. He thought fast. Putting
+on renewed speed, he never halted until they had covered about four
+miles. Here was a little cluster of houses. He stopped the car.
+
+"Come with me, quick," he directed his friends, entering the car and
+taking up Midget in his arms.
+
+Andy had been over this territory the day previous doing some exigency
+bill-posting service.
+
+He led the way down a quiet street. After walking about four squares
+they reached railroad tracks and a little station. This was locked up
+and dark within. On the platform, however, was a box ready for shipment,
+with a red lantern beside it.
+
+"I hope a train comes soon," thought Andy quite anxiously, as he caught
+the echo of the repair wagon gong nearer than before.
+
+"There's a whistle," said little Midget.
+
+"That's so," responded Andy, bending his ear. "Going north, too. I hope
+it's a train and I hope it comes along in time."
+
+"In time for what?" inquired Midget.
+
+Andy did not reply. He could estimate the progress of the pursuing wagon
+from gong sounds and shouts in the distance. He traced its halt,
+apparently at the stranded car. Then the gong sounded again.
+
+Andy glanced down the street they had come. Two flashing, wobbling
+lights gleamed in the distance, headed in the direction of the
+railway station.
+
+"They've guessed us out," said Andy. "Of course they can only delay us,
+but that counts just now. If the train--"
+
+"She's coming!" sang out Midget in a nervous, high-pitched voice.
+
+Andy's nerves were on a severe strain. A locomotive rounded a curve. The
+trolley wagon was still a quarter-of-a-mile distant.
+
+The engine slowed down to a stop, the repair rig with flying horses
+attached less than a square away.
+
+The baggage coach door opened. A man jumped out and started to put the
+box aboard.
+
+"Hold on--through train," he yelled at Andy.
+
+"That's all right. Quick, get aboard," he urged his companions.
+
+Andy glanced from the windows of the coach they entered as the train
+started up with a jerk.
+
+He saw the trolley wagon dash up to the platform. A police officer and
+some company men jumped off.
+
+"Just in time," murmured Andy with satisfaction, as the station flashed
+from view.
+
+The coach was nearly empty. He found a double seat. Miss Starr uttered a
+great sigh of relief. Poor Billy Blow sank down, thoroughly tired out.
+Midget laughed.
+
+"I hope it's a long ride," he said.
+
+"I'm afraid," spoke Miss Starr, "it won't be, Midge. See," and she
+opened a little purse, showing only a few silver coins. "I have some
+money in a bank in New York, but that does not help us at the
+present moment."
+
+"I sent all I had to my poor wife," announced the clown dejectedly.
+
+"That's all right," broke in Andy cheerily. "Here's a route list," and
+he picked up a timetable from the next seat. "Can you tell me where this
+train is bound for?" he inquired politely of a gentleman occupying the
+opposite seat.
+
+"Baltimore."
+
+"That sounds good," said Miss Starr. "There was a show there last week.
+The season's broken, we can't hope for a star engagement, but we might
+get in for a few weeks."
+
+"I haven't the money to chase up situations all over the country,"
+lamented the clown.
+
+"Don't worry on that score," put in Andy briskly. "You people find out
+where you want to go. I'll take care of the bills."
+
+"You, Andy?" spoke Miss Starr, with a stare.
+
+"Yes, ma'am. You see, I've got my savings--"
+
+"Ho! ho!" laughed Billy Blow bitterly. "Savings! Out of what? You
+haven't drawn one week's full salary since you joined us."
+
+"Remember the needle and thread you loaned me on the train when we were
+going south, Miss Starr?" asked Andy.
+
+"Why, yes, I think I do," nodded the equestrienne.
+
+"Well, I wanted it to sew up a fifty dollar bill for safe-keeping. Here
+it is."
+
+Andy with his knife ripped open a fob pocket and produced the bank note
+in question.
+
+"Our common fund," he cried, waving it gaily. "Mr. Blow, designate your
+terminus. We'll not be put off the train, while this lasts."
+
+Billy Blow choked up. He directed one grateful glance at Andy. Then he
+snuggled Midget close, and hid his face against him.
+
+Miss Starr put a trembling hand on Andy's arm. A bright tear sparkled in
+her eye.
+
+"Good as gold!" she said softly, "and true blue to the core!"
+
+"Thank you. I think I'll get a drink of water," said Andy, covering his
+own emotion at this display of others by a subterfuge.
+
+He went to the end of the car. At the moment he put out his hand for the
+glass under the water tank, a person from a near seat put out his also.
+
+"Excuse me," said Andy, as they joggled.
+
+"Certainly--you first," responded a pleasant voice.
+
+"Hello!" almost shouted Andy Wildwood, starting as if from an electric
+shock. "Why, Luke Belding!"
+
+"Eh? Aha! Andy Wildwood. Well! well! well!"
+
+It was the ambitious lion tamer of Tipton--Luke the show boy, the owner
+of the famous chicken that walked backwards.
+
+They shook hands with shining faces, forgetting the water, genuinely
+glad at the unexpected reunion.
+
+"What are you ever doing here?" asked Andy.
+
+"Me?" responded Luke, drawing himself up in mock dignity, yet withal a
+pleased pride in his eye. "Well, Wildwood, to tell you the truth I've
+got up in the world."
+
+"Glad of it."
+
+"And I am on my way to join the Greatest Show on Earth."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+WITH THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH
+
+
+"The Greatest Show On Earth?" repeated Andy wonderingly. "You don't
+mean--"
+
+"I do mean," nodded Luke vigorously. "The one--the only. Is there more
+than one? I'm on my way to join it."
+
+"You're lucky," commented Andy.
+
+"And ambitious, and tickled to death!" cried Luke effusively. "My! When
+I think of it, I imagine I'm dreaming. And say--I'm a capitalist."
+
+"Well!" smiled Andy.
+
+"Yes, sir--see?" and Luke spun round, exhibiting his neat apparel. "I'm
+an independent gentleman."
+
+"You do look prosperous," admitted Andy.
+
+"Living on my royalties."
+
+"Royalties? How's that?"
+
+"You remember the chicken?"
+
+"That walked backwards. I'll never forget it."
+
+"Well, sir," asserted Luke, "it took. When we left you, we struck a
+brisk show. Big business and the chicken a winner from the start.
+Another side showman offered me a big salary, and my boss got worried.
+He agreed to pay me ten per cent gross receipts for Bolivar. I knew he
+had a brother who was chief animal trainer with the Big Show. I took him
+up on condition that he got me a place there. He wrote to his brother,
+and I'm his assistant. On my way to Baltimore now. The show is on its
+way through Delaware."
+
+"Wait here a minute," spoke Andy, and he went back to his friends.
+
+Andy told them of meeting Luke, and the whereabouts of the Big Show.
+Just then the conductor came into the car, and they had to make a
+rapid decision.
+
+"Let us get to Baltimore, anyway," suggested the clown. "It's nearer
+home--and my wife."
+
+Andy paid their fares. Miss Starr briefly told the conductor of their
+mishaps at Lacon. Her eloquent, sympathetic eyes won Midget a free ride.
+
+Andy got pillows for his three friends, and some coffee and pie from the
+adjoining buffet car.
+
+He saw them comfortably disposed of for the night; and then went back to
+Luke.
+
+They sat down close together, two pleased, jolly friends. Andy
+interested Luke immensely by reciting his vivid experiences since they
+had parted.
+
+"By the way, Luke," he observed at last, "there's something I missed
+hearing from you at Tipton. Remember?"
+
+"Let's see," said Luke musingly. "Oh, yes--you mean about your being an
+heir?"
+
+"That's it."
+
+Luke became animated at once.
+
+"I've often thought about that," he said. "You know I was all struck of
+a heap when you first told me your name!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And asked if you was Andy Wildwood, the heir? Do you remember?"
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"Well, it was funny, but early on the day I came to the circus I was
+tramping it along a creek. About three miles out of town I should think,
+I lay down to rest among some bushes. Ten minutes after I'd got there a
+boat rowed by some persons came along. They beached it right alongside
+the brush. Then one of them, a boy, lifted a mail bag from the bottom of
+the skiff."
+
+"A mail bag--- a boy?" repeated Andy, with a start of intelligence. "Did
+you hear his name?"
+
+"Yes, in a talk that followed. The man with him called him Jim."
+
+"Jim Tapp," murmured Andy.
+
+"He called the man Murdock."
+
+"I thought so," Andy said to himself. "They put up that mail robbery."
+
+"They cut open the bag and took out a lot of letters," continued Luke.
+"A few of them had money in them. This they pocketed, tearing up the
+letters and throwing them into the creek. There was one letter the boy
+kept. He read it over and over. When they had got through with the
+letters, he said to the man that it was funny."
+
+"What was funny?" asked Andy.
+
+"Why, he said there was a letter putting him on to 'a big spec.,' as he
+called it. He said the letter told about a secret, about a fortune the
+writer had discovered. He said the letter was to a boy who would never
+know his good luck if they didn't tell him. He said to the man there was
+something to think over. He chuckled as he bragged how they would make a
+big stake juggling the fortune of the heir, Andy Wildwood."
+
+"I don't understand it at all," said Andy, "but it is a singular story,
+for a fact."
+
+"Well, that's all I know about it. The minute I heard your name, of
+course I recalled where I had heard it before."
+
+"Of course," nodded Andy thoughtfully.
+
+After that the conversation lagged. Luke soon fell asleep. For over two
+hours, however, Andy kept trying to figure out how he could possibly be
+an heir, who had written the letter, and to whom it had been addressed.
+
+The next day they arrived at Baltimore. A morning paper contained a
+dispatch from Lacon.
+
+The circus men had nearly killed half-a-dozen of the mob of roughs. The
+police had restored order, but fire and riot had put the show out
+of business.
+
+Miss Starr wired to the town in Delaware where the Big Show was playing.
+Luke had gone on to join it. By noon she received a satisfactory reply.
+Then she telegraphed to Lacon about their traps, directing the manager
+where to send them.
+
+That evening, after a long talk over their prospects, the four refugees
+took the train for Dover.
+
+The next morning Miss Starr, Billy, Midget and Andy went to the
+headquarters of The Biggest Show on Earth.
+
+Andy had a chance to inspect it while waiting for Bob Sanderson, the
+assistant manager, who was a distant relative of Miss Stella Starr.
+
+Its mammoth proportions fairly staggered him. Its details were
+bewildering in their system and perfection. Alongside of it, the circus
+he had recently belonged to was merely a side show.
+
+Sanderson was a brisk, business-like fellow. He soon settled on an
+engagement for Miss Starr and Billy and Midget for the rest of
+the season.
+
+"I don't think I can use the boy, though," he said, glancing at Andy.
+
+"Then you can't have us," said the equestrienne promptly. "Bob, you and
+I are old friends, but not better ones than myself and Andy Wildwood. He
+stood by us through thick and thin, he makes a good showing in the ring.
+Why, before the Benares Brothers left us, they were training him for one
+of the best acts ever done on the trapeze."
+
+"Is that so?" spoke Sanderson, looking interested. "The Benares Brothers
+joined us only last week. Here, give me five minutes."
+
+"Miss Starr, you mustn't let me stand in your way of a good engagement,"
+said Andy, as the assistant manager left the tent.
+
+"It's the four of us, or none," asserted the determined little lady.
+
+Sanderson came bustling in at the end of five minutes.
+
+"All right," he announced brusquely, "I'll take the boy on."
+
+"You'll never regret it," declared Stella Starr positively.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+"Bravo!"
+
+"Clever!"
+
+Amid deafening applause, old Benares and Thacher retired from the
+sawdust ring, bowing profusely with a deep sense of pride and
+satisfaction.
+
+Between them, hands joined in the group of three, Andy Wildwood imitated
+their graceful acknowledgment of the plaudits of the vast concourse in
+the great metropolitan amphitheatre.
+
+"Wildwood," declared Thacher, as they backed towards the performers'
+room, "you've made a hit."
+
+"It is so!" cried old Benares, with sparkling eyes. "We are a three
+now--The Three Benares Brothers."
+
+Andy was dizzy with exultation and delight. It was the first night of
+the Biggest Show on Earth in New York City.
+
+For a week he had been in training for the fantastic trapeze act which
+had won thunders of approbation.
+
+The Benares Brothers had appeared in the amphitheatre dome on a double
+trapeze.
+
+After several clever specialties, the ringmaster suddenly stepped
+forward. He lifted his hand. The orchestra stopped playing.
+
+Raising a pistol, the ringmaster directed it aloft. Bang! Crash! went
+the orchestra, and from a box suspended over the trapezes the bottom
+suddenly dropped out.
+
+Following, an agile youthful form shot down through space. Quick as
+lightning the Benares Brothers swung by their feet, joined hands in
+mid-air, and the descending form--Andy Wildwood--catching at the wrists
+of Thacher, was swung back in a twenty foot circle. Crash! again the
+orchestra. Andy was flung through space across to old Benares, a
+plaything in mid-air, Benares catching at the feet of Thacher, Andy
+tailing on in a graceful descent, thrilling the delighted audience.
+
+The act was not so difficult, but it was neat, rapid, unique. Andy
+Wildwood felt that at last he was a full-fledged acrobat.
+
+The manager came back to compliment him. Billy Blow looked delighted.
+Miss Stella Starr said:
+
+"Andy, we are all proud of you."
+
+The next morning's papers gave him special notice. Luke Belding
+whispered to him to demand double salary.
+
+Andy walked from his boarding house the next morning feeling certain
+that he had made very substantial progress during his sixty days of
+circus life.
+
+He was passing a row of houses on a side street when a cab drove up to
+the curb. Andy casually glanced at the passenger as he crossed the
+sidewalk. Then he gave a great start.
+
+"It can't be!" he ejaculated. Then he added instantly: "Yes, I'd know
+him among a thousand--Sim Dewey."
+
+The man entered an open doorway, and Andy ran after him. He heard the
+fellow ascend a pair of stairs and knock at a door.
+
+"Oh, good morning, Mr. Vernon."
+
+"Gracious!" exclaimed Andy--"Aunt Lavinia!"
+
+Here was a stirring situation. There could be no mistake. Despite a
+false moustache and a pair of dark eyeglasses, Andy had recognized the
+defaulting cashier of the disbanded circus. Beyond dispute he had
+recognized the welcoming tones above as belonging to his aunt, Miss
+Lavinia Talcott.
+
+"It's like dreaming," mused Andy. "All this happening together, and here
+in New York City! Why, what ever brought Aunt Lavinia here? Where did
+she ever get acquainted with that scamp?"
+
+Andy felt that he had an urgent duty to perform. Here was a mystery to
+explore, a villain to capture.
+
+He went softly up the stairs. The place was a respectable boarding
+house, he concluded. Stealing softly past a door, he went half-way up a
+second pair of stairs.
+
+Not five feet away from an open transom, Andy could now look into a room
+containing three persons.
+
+A motherly, dignified old woman sat in a big arm chair. Near her was
+Andy's aunt, smiling and simpering up at Dewey. The latter, dressed "to
+kill," was bowing like a French dancing master.
+
+Dewey sat down. The chaperone, who seemed to be the landlady, did not
+engage in a brief conversation that ensued within the room.
+
+At its conclusion Andy saw his aunt hand Dewey a folded piece of paper.
+The defaulting circus cashier gallantly bowed over her extended hand and
+came out of the room.
+
+"Hold on, Mr. Sim Dewey," spoke Andy, down the stairs in a flash, and
+seizing Dewey's arm on the landing.
+
+"Eh? Hello--Wildwood!"
+
+"Yes, it's me," said Andy. "A word with you, sir, as to what business
+you have with my aunt. Then--the stolen eleven thousand dollars, if
+you please."
+
+Dewey had turned deadly white. He glared desperately at Andy, and tried
+to wrench his arm free.
+
+"Shall I arouse the street?" demanded Andy sternly. "It's jail for
+you--"
+
+Crack! The treacherous Dewey had slipped one hand behind him. He had
+drawn a slung shot from his pocket. It struck Andy's head, and he went
+down with a sense of sickening giddiness.
+
+"Stop him!" shouted Andy, half-blinded, crawling across the landing.
+
+Dewey made a leap of four steps at a time.
+
+"Out of my way!" he yelled at some obstacle.
+
+"Hold on, mister!"
+
+Andy arose to his feet with difficulty. He clung to the banister,
+descending the stairs as a frightful clatter rang out.
+
+A boy about his own age, coming up the stairs, had collided with Dewey.
+Both tripped up and rolled to the front entry.
+
+The boy got up, unhurt. Dewey, groaning, half-arose, fell back, and lay
+prostrate, one limb bent up under him.
+
+Andy was still weak and dizzy-headed, but he acted promptly for the
+occasion.
+
+He saw that Dewey had broken a limb, and was practically helpless. He
+glanced out at the driver of the cab. He was an honest-faced old fellow.
+Andy ran out to him and spoke a few quick words.
+
+With Dewey writhing, moaning and resisting, this man, Andy and the
+strange boy carried him to the cab. Andy directed the boy to get up with
+the driver, He got inside the cab with Dewey.
+
+A hysterical shriek rang out at the street doorway. Andy saw his aunt
+wildly wringing her hands. The maiden lady was held back from pursuing
+the cab by the landlady.
+
+Within ten minutes the cab delivered Dewey at a police station, and Andy
+told his story to the precinct captain.
+
+They found in a secret pocket on the defaulting cashier certificates of
+deposit to the amount of ten thousand dollars, issued in a false name.
+The amount was a part of the stolen circus funds.
+
+In another pocket was discovered a draft for three thousand dollars,
+made over to the same false name by Miss Lavinia Talcott on the bank
+at Fairview.
+
+The police at once locked the prisoner up in a cell, sent for a surgeon,
+and asked Andy to telegraph to Mr. Giles Harding, the circus owner,
+at once.
+
+When Andy came out of the police station, he found the boy who had
+assisted him waiting for him.
+
+He was a bright-faced, pleasant-mannered lad, but his appearance
+suggested hard luck.
+
+Andy gave him a dollar, and got his name. It was Mark Hadley. Andy was
+at once interested when the boy told him that his dead father had been a
+professional sleight-of-hand man in the west.
+
+Mark Hadley had come to New York on the track of an old circus friend of
+his father. This man, it turned out, was a relative of Dewey,
+masquerading now under the name of Vernon.
+
+The man had told him that Dewey could help him out. He did not know
+where Dewey was living, but understood he was about to marry a lady
+living at the boarding house where Mark had gone, to meet the fellow in
+a most sensational manner, indeed.
+
+Andy invited Mark to call upon him later in the day, gave the youth his
+present address, and proceeded back to the boarding house to find
+his aunt.
+
+The hour that followed was one of the strangest in Andy's life.
+
+There were reproaches, threats, cajolings, until Andy found out the true
+state of affairs.
+
+It was only after he had proven to his humiliated and chagrined aunt
+that Dewey was a villain, that Miss Lavinia broke down and confessed
+that she had been a silly, sentimental woman.
+
+It seemed that the letter Jim Tapp and Murdock had secured was from Mr.
+Graham, back at Fairview.
+
+Graham had discovered in a secret bottom of the box Andy had left with
+him, a paper referring to a patent of Andy's father.
+
+As time had brought about, this paper entitled the heirs of the old
+inventor to quite large royalties on a new electrical device which had
+come into practical use after Mr. Wildwood's death.
+
+The plotters had gone at once to Miss Lavinia. Her cupidity was aroused.
+She quieted her conscience by giving Andy ten dollars at Tipton, and
+deciding to take charge of the royalty money "till he was of age."
+
+This was her story, told amid contrite tears and shame as Andy proved to
+her that Dewey was after her three thousand dollars, and would have
+escaped with it only for his decisive action.
+
+Murdock had introduced her to Dewey. The latter had pretended to be in
+love with her, had promised to marry her, and that day had induced the
+weak, silly old spinster to trust him with her little fortune.
+
+"I have been a wicked woman!" Miss Lavinia declared. "I will make
+amends, Andy. You shall have your rights. Come home with me."
+
+"Not till my engagement is over, aunt," replied Andy, "and then only for
+a visit, if you wish it. I love the circus life, and I seem to find just
+as many chances there to be good and to do good as in any other
+vocation."
+
+Miss Lavinia was given back her three thousand dollars the next day, and
+Sim Dewey was sent to prison on a long term.
+
+Mr. Harding came on to the city the following day. He recovered all
+except a trifle of the stolen circus money. That evening he sent a
+sealed envelope by special messenger to Andy. It contained five one
+hundred dollar bills--Andy's reward for capturing the embezzling
+circus cashier.
+
+The next afternoon Andy invited five of his special friends and several
+of his acquaintances to a little dinner party.
+
+Miss Starr, Billy Blow the clown, Midget, old Benares, Thacher, Luke
+Belding and Mark Hadley were his guests of honor.
+
+Andy had found a starting place in the circus for Mark, whose ambition
+was to become a great magician.
+
+They were a merry, friendly party. They jollied one another. They saw
+nothing but sunshine in the sawdust pathway before them.
+
+"You are a grand genius!" declared old Benares to Andy. "My friends, one
+thought: in six weeks up from Andy the school boy, to Andy the acrobat."
+
+"Hold on now, Mr. Benares," cried Andy, smilingly. "That was because of
+my royal, good friends like you."
+
+"And your own grit," said Marco. "You assuredly deserve your success."
+
+And the other circus people agreed with Marco.
+
+For the time being Andy heard nothing more of Tapp, Murdock and Daley.
+The days passed pleasantly enough. He did his work faithfully,
+constantly adding to his fame as an acrobat.
+
+Between Andy and Luke Belding a warm friendship sprang up. Luke had much
+to tell about himself. As time passed the lad who loved animals had many
+adventures, but what these were I must reserve for another volume, to be
+named, "Luke the Lion Tamer; or, On the Road with a Great Menagerie," In
+that we shall not only follow brave-hearted Luke but also Andy, and see
+what the future held in store for the boy acrobat.
+
+"Andy, are you glad you joined the circus?" questioned Luke, one day,
+after a particularly brilliant performance in the ring.
+
+"Glad doesn't express it," was the quick answer. "Why, it seems to be
+just what I was cut out for."
+
+"I really believe you. You never make work of an act--like some of the
+acrobats."
+
+"It must be in my blood," said Andy, with a bright smile. "Anyway, I
+expect to be Andy the Acrobat for a long while to come."
+
+And he was.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Andy the Acrobat, by Peter T. Harkness
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10396 ***
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #10396 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10396)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Andy the Acrobat, by Peter T. Harkness
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Andy the Acrobat
+
+Author: Peter T. Harkness
+
+Release Date: December 7, 2003 [EBook #10396]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANDY THE ACROBAT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Ginny Brewer and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+ANDY THE ACROBAT
+
+Or
+
+Out With the Greatest Show on Earth
+
+BY
+
+PETER T. HARKNESS
+
+Author of
+
+CHIMPANZEE HUNTERS,
+CIRCUSES--OLD AND NEW,
+HOW A GREAT SHOW TRAVELS, ETC.
+
+1907
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER
+
+     I. EXPELLED
+
+    II. HOOP-LA!
+
+   III. DISASTER
+
+    IV. A BUSINESS PROPOSITION
+
+     V. THE CIRCUS
+
+    VI. CIRCUS TALK
+
+   VII. A WARM RECEPTION
+
+  VIII. "COASTING"
+
+    IX. GOOD-BYE TO FAIRVIEW
+
+     X. A FIRST APPEARANCE
+
+    XI. SAWDUST AND SPANGLES
+
+   XII. AN ARM OF THE LAW
+
+  XIII. ON THE ROAD
+
+   XIV. BILLY BLOW, CLOWN
+
+    XV. ANDY JOINS THE SHOW
+
+   XVI. THE REGISTERED MAIL
+
+  XVII. A WILD JOURNEY
+
+ XVIII. A FREAK OF NATURE
+
+   XIX. CALLED TO ACCOUNT
+
+    XX. ANDY'S ESCAPE
+
+   XXI. A FULL FLEDGED ACROBAT
+
+  XXII. AMONG THE CAGES
+
+ XXIII. FACING THE ENEMY
+
+  XXIV. ANDY'S AUNT
+
+   XXV. A BEAR ON THE RAMPAGE
+
+  XXVI. A CLEVER RUSE
+
+ XXVII. A ROYAL REWARD
+
+XXVIII. "HEY, RUBE!"
+
+  XXIX. A FREE TROLLEY RIDE
+
+   XXX. WITH THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH
+
+  XXXI. CONCLUSION
+
+
+
+ANDY THE ACROBAT
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+EXPELLED
+
+
+"Andrew Wildwood!"
+
+The village schoolmaster of Fairview spoke this name in a tone of
+severity. He accompanied the utterance with a bang of the ruler that
+made the desk before him rattle.
+
+There was fire in his eye and his lip trembled. Half of the twenty odd
+scholars before him looked frightened, the others interested. None had
+ever before seen the dull, sleepy pedagogue so wrought up.
+
+All eyes were fixed on a lad of about sixteen, seated in the front row
+of desks.
+
+The name called out applied to him. It had been abbreviated so commonly,
+however, that its full dignity seemed to daze him for the moment.
+
+Andrew Wildwood slowly arose, his big, fearless eyes fixed dubiously on
+the schoolmaster.
+
+"Yes, sir," he said.
+
+"Step forward, sir."
+
+Andy Wildwood did so. He was now in full view of the other scholars. Mr.
+Darrow also arose. He thrust one hand behind his long coat tails,
+twirling them fiercely. From the little platform that was his throne he
+glared down at the unabashed Andy. In his other hand he flourished the
+long black ruler threateningly.
+
+He pointed a terrible finger towards two desks, about four feet apart,
+at one side of the room. The desk nearest to the wall had its top split
+clear across, and one corner was splintered off.
+
+"Did you break that desk?" demanded the pedagogue.
+
+Andy's lips puckered slightly in a comical twist. He had a vivid
+imagination, and the shattered desk suggested an exciting and
+pleasurable moment in the near past. Some one chuckled at the rear of
+the room. Andy's face broke into an irrepressible smile.
+
+"Order!" roared the schoolmaster, bringing down the ruler with a loud
+bang. "Young man, I asked you: did you break that desk?"
+
+"Yes, sir, I'm afraid I smashed it," said Andy in a rather subdued tone.
+"It was an accident."
+
+"He was only fooling, teacher!" in an excited lisp spoke up little Tod
+Smith, the youngest pupil in the school. "He broke the desk, but--say,
+teacher! he did it--yes, sir, Andy did the double somersault, just like
+a real circus actor, and landed square on both feet!"
+
+The eyes of Andy's diminutive champion and admirer sparkled like
+diamonds. A murmur of delight and sympathy went the rounds of the
+schoolroom.
+
+Mr. Darrow glared savagely at the boy. He brandished the ruler wildly,
+sending an ink bottle rolling to the floor. As a titter greeted this
+catastrophe, he lost his temper and dignity completely.
+
+Springing down from the platform, he made a swoop upon Andy. The latter
+stood his ground, and there was a shock. Then Andy was swayed to and fro
+as the schoolmaster grasped his arm.
+
+"Young man," spoke Mr. Darrow in a shaking tone, "this is the limit. An
+example must be made! Last week you tore down the schoolhouse chimney
+with your ridiculous tight rope performances."
+
+"And wasn't it just jolly!" gloated a juvenile gleesome voice in a loud
+whisper.
+
+The schoolmaster swept the room with a shocked glance. It had no effect
+upon the bubbling-over effervescence of his pupils. Every imagination
+was vividly recalling the rope tied from the schoolhouse chimney to a
+near tree. Every heart renewed the thrills that had greeted Andy
+Wildwood's daring walk across the quivering cable.
+
+Then the culminating climax: the giving way of the chimney, a shower of
+bricks--but the young gymnast, safe and serene, dangling from the eaves.
+
+"Last week also," continued the schoolmaster, "you stole Farmer Dale's
+calf and carried it five miles away. You are complained of continually.
+As I said, young man, you have reached the limit. Human patience and
+endurance can go no farther. You are demoralizing this school. And now,"
+concluded Mr. Darrow, his lips setting grimly, "you must toe the mark."
+
+A hush of expectancy, of rare excitement, pervaded the room. The
+schoolmaster swung aloft the ruler with one hand. He swung Andy around
+directly in front of him with the other hand.
+
+Andy's face suddenly grew serious. He tugged to get loose.
+
+"Hold on, Mr. Darrow," he spoke quickly. "You mustn't strike me."
+
+"How? what! defiance on top of rebellion!" shouted the irate pedagogue.
+"Keep your seats!" he roared, as half the school came upright under the
+tense strain of the moment.
+
+The next he was struggling with Andy. Forward and backward then went
+over the clear recitation space. The ruler was dropped in the scrimmage.
+As Mr. Darrow stooped to repossess it, Andy managed to break loose.
+
+Dodging behind the zinc shield that fronted the stove, he caught its top
+with both hands. He moved about presenting a difficult barrier against
+easy capture. Andy looked pretty determined now. The schoolmaster was so
+angry that his face was as red as a piece of flannel. He advanced again
+upon the culprit, so choked up that his lips made only inarticulate
+sounds.
+
+"One minute, please, Mr. Darrow," said Andy. "You mustn't try to whip
+me. I can't stand it, and I won't. It hasn't been the rule here, ever. I
+did wrong, though I couldn't help it, and I'm sorry for it. I'll stand
+double study and staying in from recess and after school for a month, if
+you say so. You can put me in the dark hole and keep me without my
+dinner as long as you like. I have lots of good friends here. I'd be
+ashamed to face them after a whipping--and I won't!"
+
+"Yes, yes--he's right!" rang out an earnest chorus.
+
+"Silence!" roared the schoolmaster. "An example must be made. I shall do
+my duty. Andrew Wildwood--Graham! what do you mean, sir?"
+
+The scholars thrilled, as a new and unexpected element came into the
+situation.
+
+Graham, quite a young man, and double the weight of the schoolmaster,
+had arisen from his seat. He walked quietly between Mr. Darrow and Andy,
+quite pushing back the former gently.
+
+"The lad is right, Mr. Darrow," he said, in his quiet, drawling way. "I
+wouldn't punish him before the scholars if I were you, sir."
+
+"What's this? You interfere!" flared out the pedagogue.
+
+"Don't take it that way, Mr. Darrow," said Graham. "You are displeased,
+and justly so, sir, but boys will be boys. Andy is the right kind of a
+lad, I assure you, only in the wrong kind of a place. They did the same
+thing with me when I was young. If they hadn't, I wouldn't be here
+spelling out words of two syllables at twenty-eight years of age."
+
+Andy's eyes glistened at the big scholar's friendliness. A murmur of
+approbation ran round the room.
+
+Silently the pedagogue fumed. The disaffection of the occasion, mild and
+respectful as it was, disarmed him. He regarded Andy with a despairing
+look. Then he straightened up with great dignity.
+
+"Take your seat, sir!" he ordered Andy severely, marching back to his
+own desk.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Andy humbly.
+
+"Pack up your books."
+
+Andy looked up in dismay. The fixed glint in the schoolmaster's eye told
+him that this new move meant no fooling.
+
+"Now you may go home," resumed Mr. Darrow, as Andy had obeyed his first
+mandate.
+
+Andy kept a stiff upper lip, though he felt that the world was slipping
+away from him.
+
+A picture of an unloving home, a stern, hard mistress who would make use
+of this, his final disgrace, as a continual club and menace to all his
+future peace of mind, fairly appalled him.
+
+He arose to his feet, swinging his strapped up books to and fro airily,
+but there was a dismal catch in his voice as he turned to the teacher's
+desk, and said:
+
+"Mr. Darrow, I guess I would rather take the whipping."
+
+"Too late," pronounced the relentless schoolmaster in icy tones.
+
+And then, as Andy reached the door amid the gruesome silence and awe of
+his sympathetic comrades, Mr. Darrow added the final dreadful words:
+
+"You are expelled."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+HOOP-LA!
+
+
+Andy Wildwood passed out of the village schoolhouse an anxious and
+desolate boy.
+
+The brightest of sunshine gilded the spires and steeples of the village.
+It flooded highway and meadows with rich yellow light, but Andy,
+swinging his school books over his shoulder, walked on with drooping
+head and a cheerless heart.
+
+"It's pretty bad, it's just the very worst!" he said with a deep sigh,
+as he reached a stile and sat down a-straddle of it.
+
+Andy tossed his books up into the hollow of a familiar oak near at hand.
+Then he fell to serious thinking.
+
+His gaze roving over the landscape, lit on the farmhouse of Jabez Dale.
+It revived the recent allusion of the old schoolmaster.
+
+"I didn't steal that calf," declared Andy, straightening up indignantly.
+"Graham, who boards over at Millville, told us boys how Dale had sold a
+cow to a farmer there. He said they took her away from her calf, and the
+poor thing refused to eat. She just paced up and down a pasture fence
+from morning till night, crying for her calf. We got the calf, and
+carried it to its mother. I'll never forget the sight, and I'll never
+regret it, either--and what's best, the man who had got the cow was so
+worked up over its almost human grief, that he paid Dale for the calf,
+too, and kept it."
+
+The memory of the incident brightened up Andy momentarily. Then, his
+glance flitting to the distant roof of a small neat cottage in a pretty
+grove of cedars, his face fell again. He choked on a great lump in
+his throat.
+
+"Ginger!" he whistled dolefully, "how can I ever face the music over
+there!"
+
+The cottage was Andy's home, but the thought had no charm or sweetness
+for the lone orphan boy whom its roof had grudgingly sheltered for the
+past five years.
+
+Once it had belonged to his father. He had died when Andy was ten years
+old. Then it had passed into the legal possession of Mr. Wildwood's
+half-sister, Miss Lavinia Talcott.
+
+This aunt was Andy's nearest relative. He had lived with her since his
+father's death, if it could be called living.
+
+Miss Lavinia's favorite topic was the sure visitation of the sins of the
+father upon his children.
+
+She was of a sour, snappy disposition. Her prim boast and pride was that
+she was a strict disciplinarian.
+
+To a lad of Andy's free and easy nature, her rules and regulations were
+torture and an abomination.
+
+She made him take off his muddy shoes in the woodshed. Woe to him if he
+ever brought a splinter of whittling, or a fragment of nutshell, into
+the distressingly neat kitchen!
+
+Only one day in the week--Sunday--was Andy allowed the honor of sitting
+in the best room.
+
+Then, for six mortal hours his aching limbs were glued to a
+straight-backed chair. There, in parlor state, he sat listening to the
+prim old maid's reading religious works, or some scientific lecture, or
+a dreary dissertation on good behavior.
+
+She never allowed a schoolmate to visit him, even in the well-kept yard.
+She restricted his hours of play. And all the time never gave him a
+loving word or caress.
+
+On the contrary, many times a week Miss Lavinia administered a
+tongue-lashing that suggested perpetual motion.
+
+Mr. Wildwood had been something of an inventor. He had gotten up a
+hoisting derrick that was very clever. It brought him some money. This
+he sunk in an impossible balloon, crippled himself in the initial voyage
+of his airship, and died shortly afterwards of a broken heart.
+
+Andy's mother had died when he was an infant. Thus it was that he fell
+into the charge of his unloving aunt.
+
+It seemed that the latter had loaned Mr. Wildwood some money for his
+scientific experiments. As repayment, when he died, she took the cottage
+and what else was left of the wreck of his former fortune.
+
+Even this she claimed did not pay her up in full, and she made poor Andy
+feel all the time that he was eating the bread of charity.
+
+Andy's grandfather had been a famous sailor. Andy had read an old
+private account among his father's papers of a momentous voyage his
+grandfather had made to the Antarctic circle.
+
+He loved to picture his ancestor among the ship's rigging. He had an
+additional enthusiasm in another description of his father's
+balloon venture.
+
+Andy wished he had been born to fly. He seemed to have inherited a sort
+of natural acrobatic tendency. At ten years of age he was the best boy
+runner and jumper in the village.
+
+The first circus he had seen--not with Miss Lavinia's permission--set
+Andy fairly wild, and later astonished his playmates with prodigious
+feats of walking on a barrel, somersaulting, vaulting with a pole, and
+numerous other amateur gymnastic attainments.
+
+For the past month a circus, now exhibiting in a neighboring town, had
+been advertised in glowing prose and lurid pictures on big billboards
+all over the county.
+
+Juvenile Fairview was set on fire anew with the circus fever. Andy's
+rope-walking feat and double somersault act from desk to desk that
+morning had resulted, getting him into the trouble of his life. It
+furthermore had interrupted other performances on the programme listed
+for later on that very day.
+
+Andy's head had been full of the circus since he had seen its first
+poster at a cross-roads. He could never pass a heap of sawdust without
+cutting a caper.
+
+In the spelling contest, he had stupefied his fellow students by nimbly
+rattling over such words as "megatherian," "stupendous," "zoological
+aggregation," and the like.
+
+One of his sums covered the number of yards a clown could cover in a
+given time on a handspring basis. He had shocked the schoolmaster by
+handing in an essay on "The Art of Bareback Riding."
+
+Andy had tried every acrobatic trick he had seen depicted in the glowing
+advance sheets announcing the circus. To repeated efforts in this
+direction his admiring schoolmates had continually incited him.
+
+He had tried the double somersault in the schoolroom that morning. Andy
+had made a famous success of the experiment, but with the direful result
+of smashing a desk, and subsequent expulsion.
+
+Thinking over all this, Andy realized that the beginning and end of all
+his troubles was his irrepressible tendency towards acrobatic
+performances.
+
+"And I simply can't help it!" he cried in a kind of reckless despair.
+"It's born in me, I guess. Oh, don't I hope Aunt Lavinia turns me out,
+as she has often threatened to do. Say, if she only would, and I could
+join some show, and travel and see things and--live!"
+
+Andy threw himself flat on the green sward. He closed his eyes and gave
+himself up to a rapture of thought.
+
+Gay banners, brightly comparisoned horses, white wildernesses of circus
+tents, tinselled clowns, royal ringmasters, joyful strains of music
+floated through his active brain. It was a day dream of rare beauty, and
+he could not tear himself away from it.
+
+An idle hour went by before Andy realized it. As echoing voices rang out
+on the quiet air, he got to his feet rubbing his eyes as if they
+were dazzled.
+
+"Recess already," Andy said. "Well, I'll lay low until it's over. I
+don't want to meet the boys just now. Then I'll do some more thinking. I
+suppose I've got to decide to go home. Ugh! but I hate to--and I just
+won't until the very last moment."
+
+Andy went in among the shrubbery farther away from the road, but he
+could not hide himself. An active urchin discovered him from a distance.
+He yelled out riotously to his comrades, and they all came trooping
+along pell-mell in Andy's direction.
+
+Their expelled schoolmate and favorite greeted them with a genial smile,
+never showing the white feather in the least.
+
+His chums found him carelessly tossing half-a-dozen crab apples from
+hand to hand. Andy was an adept in "the glass ball act." He described
+rapid semicircles, festoons and double crosses. He shot the green
+objects up into the air in all directions, and went through the
+performance without a break.
+
+"Isn't Andy a crackerjack?" gloated enthusiastic little Tod Smith. "Oh,
+say, Andy, you won't disappoint us now, will you?"
+
+"What about?" inquired Andy.
+
+"The rest of it."
+
+"The rest of what?"
+
+"Your show. You know you promised--"
+
+"Oh, that's all off!" declared Andy gloomily. "I've made trouble enough
+already with my circus antics, I'm thinking."
+
+"Don't you be mean now, Andy Wildwood!" broke in Ned Wilfer, a
+particular friend of the expelled boy. "Old Darrow has given us a double
+recess. We have a good forty minutes to have fun in. Come on."
+
+The speaker seized Andy's reluctant arm and began pulling him towards
+the road.
+
+"Got the horse?" he asked of a companion.
+
+"Sure," eagerly nodded the lad addressed. "I got him fixed up, platform,
+blanket and all, before school. He's tied up, waiting, at the end of
+father's ten-acre lot."
+
+"Yes, and I've got the hoop all ready there, too," chimed in Alf Warren,
+another schoolboy.
+
+"See here, fellows," demurred Andy dubiously, "I haven't much heart for
+frolic. I'm expelled, you know, and there's Aunt Lavinia--"
+
+"Forget it!" interrupted Ned. "That will all right itself."
+
+Andy consented to accompany the gleeful, expectant throng. They had
+arranged the night before to hold an amateur circus exhibition "on their
+own hook."
+
+One boy had agreed to provide the "fiery steed" for the occasion. Alf
+Warren was to be property man, and donate the blazing hoop.
+
+They soon reached the corner of the ten-acre lot. There, tethered to a
+stake and grazing placidly, was a big-boned, patient-looking horse.
+
+Across his back was strapped a small platform made of a cistern cover.
+This had been cushioned with a folded buggy robe.
+
+Alf Warren dove excitedly into a clump of bushes. He reappeared
+triumphantly holding aloft a big hoop. It was wound round and round with
+strips of woolen cloth which exuded an unmistakable and unpleasant odor
+of kerosene.
+
+"Say! it's going to be just like the circus picture on the side of the
+post office, isn't it?" chuckled little Tod Smith.
+
+Ned Wilier took down the fence bars and led the horse out into the road.
+
+Andy pulled off his coat and shoes. He stowed them alongside a rock near
+the fence. Then he produced some elastic bands and secured his trousers
+around the ankles.
+
+His eyes brightened and he forgot all his troubles for the time being,
+as he ran back a bit.
+
+"Out of the way there!" shouted Andy with glowing cheeks, posing for a
+forward dash.
+
+He made a quick, superb bound and landed lightly on the horse's back.
+
+Old Dobbin shied restively. Ned, at his nose, quieted him with a word.
+
+Andy, the centre of an admiring group, tested the impromptu platform. He
+accepted a short riding whip handed up to him by Alf Warren with a truly
+professional flourish. Andy stood easy and erect, one hand on his hip.
+All that seemed lacking was the sawdust ring and a tinselled garb.
+
+"Ready," announced Andy.
+
+All of the group except Ned Wilfer started down the road in the wake of
+Alf Warren. The latter carried the hoop in one hand, some matches in
+the other.
+
+The mob rounded the highway, purposely selected because it curved, and
+disappeared from view.
+
+"Everything all right, Andy?" inquired Ned, strutting about with quite a
+ringmaster-like air.
+
+"Yes, if the horse will go any."
+
+"Oh, he'll get up full speed, once started," assured Ned.
+
+It was fully five minutes before an expected signal reached them. From
+far around the bend in the road there suddenly echoed vivid shouts and
+whistlings.
+
+"Start him up," ordered Andy.
+
+Ned led the horse a few rods and got him to running. Then, dropping to
+the rear, he kept pace with the animal, slapping one flank and urging
+him up to greater speed.
+
+He fell behind, but kept on running, as Andy, guiding the horse by the
+long bridle reins, occasionally gave him a stimulating touch of the
+light whip he carried.
+
+Five hundred feet covered, old Dobbin seemed to enjoy the novelty of the
+occasion, and kept up a very fair gait.
+
+Rounding the curve in the road and looking a quarter-of-a-mile ahead,
+Andy could see his schoolmates gathered around a tree stump surmounted
+by Alf Warren, holding the hoop aloft.
+
+Just here, too, for the space of a mere minute Andy could view the
+schoolhouse through a break in the timber.
+
+A swift side glance showed the big scholar, Graham, lounging in the
+doorway.
+
+Just approaching him from the direction of the village was the old
+schoolmaster, Mr. Darrow.
+
+"He has been up to see Aunt Lavinia, that's the reason of the double
+recess," thought Andy, his heart sinking a trifle. Then, flinging care
+to the winds for the occasion, he uttered a ringing:
+
+"Hoop-la!"
+
+Andy felt that he must do justice to the expectations of his young
+friends.
+
+He swung outward on one foot in true circus ring fashion. He swayed back
+at the end of the bridles. He tipped thrillingly at the very edge of the
+cushioned platform. All the time by shouts and whip, he urged up old
+Dobbin to his best spurt of speed.
+
+At the schoolhouse door Mr. Darrow gazed at the astonishing spectacle
+with uplifted hands.
+
+"Shocking!" he groaned. "Graham, there goes the most incorrigible boy in
+Fairview."
+
+"Yes," nodded Graham with a quaint smile, as Andy Wildwood flashed out
+of sight past the break in the timber--"he certainly is going some."
+
+"He'll break his neck!"
+
+"I trust not."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+DISASTER
+
+
+Old Dobbin pricked up his ears and kept royally to his task as he seemed
+to enter into the excitement of the moment.
+
+Andy had practiced on the animal on several previous occasions. Lumps of
+sugar and apples had rewarded Dobbin at the end of the performances for
+his faithful services. He seemed now to remember this, as he galloped
+along towards the waiting group down the road.
+
+Sometimes Andy had made the horseback somersault successfully. Sometimes
+he had failed ignominiously and tumbled to the ground. Just now he felt
+no doubt of the result. The padded cushion cover was broad and steady.
+
+He kept the horse close to the inner edge of the road. The tree stump
+upon which Alf Warren stood just lined it.
+
+By holding the hoop extended straight out, the horse's body would pass
+directly under this.
+
+Nearer and nearer steed and rider approached the point of interest.
+
+The spectators gaped and squirmed, vastly excited, but silent now.
+
+About one hundred feet away from the tree stump, Andy shouted out the
+quick word:
+
+"Ready."
+
+At once Alf Warren drew the match in his free hand across his coat
+sleeve. It lighted. He applied the ignited splinter to the edge of
+the hoop.
+
+The oil-soaked covering took fire instantly. The blaze ran round the
+circle. The hoop burst into a wreath of light, darting flames.
+
+Andy fixed a calculating eye on hoop and holder.
+
+"Two inches lower," he ordered--"keep it firm."
+
+The horse seemed inclined to swerve at a sight of the fiery hoop. Andy
+soothed Dobbin by word and kept him steady with the bridle reins.
+
+Everything seemed working smoothly. Andy moved to the extreme rear edge
+of the platform and poised there.
+
+Five feet away from the hoop he dropped the riding whip. Then he flung
+the reins across the horse's neck.
+
+With nerve and precision Andy started a forward somersault at just the
+right moment.
+
+He felt a warm wave cross his face. As he made the complete circle he
+knew that something was wrong.
+
+"Ouch!" suddenly yelled out Alf.
+
+A spurt of flame had shot against his hand that held the short stick
+attached to the hoop.
+
+Alf let go the hoop and dropped it. As Andy came down, righted again on
+the platform, one foot struck the narrow edge of the hoop.
+
+He was in his stocking feet, and the contact cut the instep sharply. It
+threw Andy off his balance. He tried to right himself, but failed. He
+tipped sideways, and was forced to jump to the ground.
+
+The hoop fell forward against the horse's mane. With a wild neigh of
+terror and pain the animal leaped to one side, carrying away a section
+of rotten fence. The blazing hoop now dropped around its neck.
+
+A shout of dismay went up from the spectators. Alf, nursing his burned
+fingers, looked scared. Andy glanced sharply after the flying horse and
+spurted after it. At that moment the school bell rang out, and the crowd
+made a rush in the direction of the building. Alf Warren lagged behind.
+
+"Go ahead," directed Andy, "I'll catch Dobbin."
+
+Ned Wilfer at that moment dashed up to Andy's side.
+
+"I'll stay and help you," he panted.
+
+"Don't be tardy, don't get into trouble," said Andy.
+
+Dobbin was making straight across a meadow. The kerosene soaked rags had
+pretty well burned out. They smoked still, however, and in the breeze
+once in a while a tongue of flame would dart forth.
+
+Dobbin passed a haystack, then another. He was momentarily shut out from
+Andy's view on both occasions.
+
+At his second reappearance Andy noticed that the animal had got rid of
+the hoop. Dobbin now slackened his pace, snorted, and, laying down,
+rolled over and over in the stubble.
+
+The horse righted himself as Andy came up with him, breathless.
+
+"So, so, old fellow," soothed Andy. "Just singed the mane a little,
+that's all."
+
+He patted the animal's nose and seized the bridle to lead Dobbin back to
+the pasture from which he had started.
+
+"Oh, gracious!" exclaimed Andy, abruptly dropping the bridle quicker
+than he had seized it.
+
+Forty feet back on the course Dobbin had come, the second haystack was
+all ablaze.
+
+There the horse had thrown off the fire hoop, or it had burned through
+at some part and had dropped there.
+
+It had set the dry hay aflame. As Andy looked, it spread out into a
+fan-like blaze, enveloping one whole side of the stack.
+
+Andy was dumb with consternation. However, he was not the boy to face a
+calamity inactively.
+
+His quick eye saw that the stack was doomed. What troubled him more than
+that was the imminent danger to half-a-dozen other stacks nearly
+adjoining it.
+
+"All Farmer Dale's hay!" gasped the perturbed lad. "Fifty tons, if
+there's one. If all that goes, what shall I do?"
+
+Andy took in the whole situation with a vivid glance. Then he made a
+bee-line dash for a broken stack against which rested a large
+field rake.
+
+It was broad and had a very long handle. Andy ran with it towards the
+blazing heap of hay and set to work instantly.
+
+"This won't do," he breathed excitedly, as an effort to beat out the
+spreading flames only caused burning shreds to fill the air. These
+threatened to ignite the contiguous stacks.
+
+Once the first of these was started they would all go one after the
+other. They were out of the direct draught of the light breeze
+prevailing. What cinders arose went straight up high in the air. The
+main danger threatened from the stubble.
+
+Creeping into this from the base of the haystack in flames, little
+pathways of fire darted out like vicious serpents.
+
+Andy made for these with the rake. He beat at them and scraped the
+ground. He stamped with his stockinged feet and pulled up clumps of
+stubble with his hands.
+
+The trouble was that so many little fires started up at so many
+different spots. Finally, however, the ground was a mass of burned-out
+grass for twenty feet clear around the centre of the blaze.
+
+The haystack was sinking down a glowing mass, but now confined itself
+and past spreading out.
+
+Andy flung himself on the ground fairly exhausted. His hands and face
+were somewhat blistered, and he was wringing wet with perspiration.
+
+He looked pretty serious as he did "a sum out of school."
+
+"That stack held about two tons and a-half," he calculated. "I heard a
+farmer at the post-office say yesterday that he was getting eight
+dollars in the stack for hay. There's twenty dollars gone up in smoke.
+Where will I ever get twenty dollars?"
+
+Andy became more and more despondent the longer he thought of the dismal
+situation.
+
+He stirred himself to action. With the rake he heaped together the
+brittle filaments of burned hay.
+
+"It can't spread any now," he decided finally. "It's dying down to
+nothing. Now then, what's next?"
+
+Andy took a far look in all directions. The fire had burned so rapidly
+and clear in the crisp light air that it did not seem to have been
+observed in the village.
+
+Andy wondered, however, that some of the Dales had not discovered it. He
+stood gazing thoughtfully at the Dale homestead about a
+quarter-of-a-mile away.
+
+A great many impulsive, disheartening and also reckless projects ran
+through his mind.
+
+"It's an awful fix to be in," ruminated Andy with a sigh of real
+distress. "If ever it was up to a fellow to cut stick and run, it's up
+to Andy Wildwood at this minute. Expelled from school, burning up a
+man's haystack and then--Aunt Lavinia! The rest is bad enough, but when
+I think of her it sends the cold chills all over me. Ugh!"
+
+Andy looked for Dobbin. It was some time before he discovered the
+innocent partner of his recent disastrous escapade.
+
+The old horse was half-a-mile distant, placidly making along the roadway
+for home.
+
+Andy rubbed his head in distress and uncertainty. He had a hard problem
+to figure out. Suddenly his eyes snapped and he straightened up briskly.
+
+"I won't crawl," he declared. "'Toe the mark' is Aunt Lavinia's great
+motto. 'Face the music' is mine. I won't turn tail and play the sneak.
+I've destroyed some property. Well, the first honest thing to do is to
+try and make good. Here goes."
+
+Andy started for the road. He reached the spot where he had left his
+coat and shoes. Donning these he went to a little pool in the brush,
+washed his face and hands, and made a short cut for Farmer Dale's house.
+
+Andy's heart was beating pretty fast as he entered the farm yard, but he
+marched straight up to the front door.
+
+Andy knocked, first timidly, then louder.
+
+There was no response.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+A BUSINESS PROPOSITION
+
+
+"Nobody at home," said Andy to himself.
+
+He walked around the house to find all the windows closed and locked.
+
+"That's the reason no one came to the fire," he resumed. "There's
+somebody, though."
+
+Andy started in the direction of the barn. He had caught the sound of
+some one chopping or hammering there.
+
+He came upon a hired hand splitting some sawed hickory slabs to whittle
+down into skewers.
+
+"Mr. Dale's folks all away?" inquired Andy.
+
+"Reckon they are, youngster," answered the man.
+
+"Will they be gone long, do you think?"
+
+"Mr. Dale won't. He drove the family over to Centreville. The circus is
+there, you know."
+
+"Yes," said Andy--longingly.
+
+"Took them early, so they could look around town. They're going to stay
+all night with some relations, Mr. Dale isn't, though. He ought to be
+back by this time. He's due now. Was talking of carting a couple of
+loads of hay over to Gregson's this morning."
+
+Andy's heart sank at this. He did not tell the man about the fire.
+Backing away gloomily, he went out into the road again.
+
+Every point in the landscape suggested some section of his morning's
+misfortunes. Andy craned his neck as he took in a distant view of the
+old school-house.
+
+He made out a female figure approaching it. Andy recognized the green
+bombazine dress of Miss Lavinia Talcott. She carried a baggy umbrella in
+her hand. Andy from experience knew that its possession by the old maid
+was generally a sign that she was on the war-path.
+
+"She's hunting for me," thought Andy. "I suppose I've got to face the
+music some time, but I'll not do it just now, I've got some business to
+attend to, first."
+
+Andy hurried down the Centreville turnpike. He walked along briskly,
+more to get out of possible range of Miss Lavinia than with any other
+distinct motive in mind. Still, Andy had "business" in view. That burned
+down haystack haunted him. Somehow he must square himself with Mr. Dale,
+he said. He fancied he had found a way.
+
+Andy did not pause until he was fully a mile down the highway. He felt
+safe from interruption now, and sat down on an old log and mused in a
+dreamy, drifting sort of a way.
+
+The sound of approaching wagon wheels disturbed him in the midst of a
+depressing reverie.
+
+"It's Mr. Dale," said Andy, getting up from the log and viewing the
+approaching team. "I wanted to see you, Mr. Dale," he spoke aloud as the
+carry-all came abreast of him.
+
+"Oh, hello, you, Wildwood," spoke the farmer with a grin. "Playing
+hookey, eh?"
+
+"No, sir," answered Andy frankly. "I was expelled from school this
+morning."
+
+"Do tell me now!" said Dale. "Want a lift?"
+
+"No, sir," answered Andy, "I just wanted to take up a minute of your
+time. I'm sorry, Mr. Dale, I don't suppose you think any too much of me
+already, and when I tell you--"
+
+"Hey? Ha! ha!" chuckled Dale. "Think I'm sore on you because of that
+calf business? Not at all, not at all. Why, I got double price for the
+critter, see?"
+
+"There's something else," announced Andy seriously. "The truth is, Mr.
+Dale, I burned down one of your haystacks about an hour ago."
+
+"What! You burned one of my haystacks? Which one--which one?" demanded
+Dale, growing pale with excitement.
+
+"The little one to the north-east of the field," explained Andy. "I
+should think it held between two and three tons."
+
+Farmer Dale dropped the lines and jumped down into the road from the
+wagon, whip in hand. All his jubilant slyness deserted him. He began to
+get frightfully worked up over Andy's news.
+
+"Wait a minute," pleaded Andy. "Don't get excited till I explain. I
+managed to save the other stacks. It was all an accident, but I want to
+pay the damage. Yes, I'll pay you, Mr. Dale."
+
+"You'll have to, you bet on that!" snorted the farmer wrathfully. "I'll
+go to your aunt right off with the bill."
+
+"Don't do it, Mr. Dale," advised Andy. "She preaches lots about honesty
+and responsibility and all that, but she's mighty close when it comes to
+the dollars. She wouldn't pay you a cent, no, sir, but I will. That hay
+is worth about twenty dollars, I reckon, Mr. Dale?"
+
+"Well, yes, it is," nodded the farmer. "Good timothy is scarce, and that
+was a prime lot."
+
+"I've got no money, of course," went on Andy, "but I thought this:
+couldn't you give me some work to do and let me pay it out in that way?
+I'll do my level best to--"
+
+"Oh! that's your precious proposition, is it?" snarled Mr. Dale,
+switching the whip about furiously. "No, I couldn't. The hand I've got
+now is idle half the time. See here, Wildwood, arson is a pretty serious
+crime. You'd better square this thing some way. In fact you've got to do
+it, or there's going to be trouble."
+
+"I know what you mean," said Andy--"you'll have me arrested. You mustn't
+do that, Mr. Dale--I feel bad enough, I'm in a hard enough corner
+already. I want to do what's right, and I intend to. I owe you twenty
+dollars. Will you give me time to pay it in? Will you take my note--with
+interest, of course--for the amount?"
+
+"Will I--take your note--interest? ha! ha! oh, dear me! dear me!" fairly
+exploded Dale in a burst of uproarious laughter.
+
+"Secured," added Andy in a business-like tone.
+
+"Secured by what?" demanded Dale eagerly.
+
+"I can't tell you now. I will to-night, or to-morrow morning."
+
+"You don't mean old ball bats, or your mud scow in the creek, or that
+kind of trash?" inquired Dale suspiciously.
+
+"No, sir, I mean tangible security," declared Andy.
+
+"You don't seem to carry much of it around with you," suggested Dale
+bluntly, casting a sarcastic eye over Andy's well-worn clothes.
+
+"Perhaps not," admitted Andy, coloring up. "I can give you security,
+though. What I want to know is this: If I can place good security in the
+hands of a trusty person, will you give me--say--three months to pay you
+off in? If I don't, the person will sell the security and pay you
+in full."
+
+"Why don't you put the security in my hands?" asked the farmer shrewdly.
+
+"Because I have done some damage up at the schoolhouse. I want to pay
+for that, too. You will be satisfied with the security and the person
+holding it, Mr. Dale. I will let you know all about it before ten
+o'clock to-morrow morning."
+
+Farmer Dale surveyed Andy with a long, curious stare, whistling softly
+to himself. His hot temper was subdued, now that he saw a prospect of
+payment for the burned hay.
+
+"You talk straight off the reel, Wildwood," he said. "I believe you're
+honest. Go on with your little arrangement, and let's see how it pans
+out. I shan't make any move until after ten o'clock to-morrow morning."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Dale," said Andy. "I won't disappoint you."
+
+Andy started to move away from the spot.
+
+"Hold on," interrupted Dale. "Tell me how it happened."
+
+Andy gave an unbiased account of the morning's occurrences.
+
+"Ha! hum!" commented the farmer. "No end of scrapes because you're a
+lively lad and can't help it. See here, Wildwood, do you know what I
+would do if I were in your place?"
+
+"No, what's that, Mr. Dale?" asked Andy.
+
+"I'd join the show--yes, I would!" declared the farmer energetically. "I
+tell you I believe circus is born in you, and you can't help it. You
+don't have much of a life at home. You're not built for humdrum village
+life. Get out; grow into something you fancy. No need being a scamp
+because you're a rover. My brother was built your sort. They pinned him
+down trying to make a doctor of him, and he ran away. He turned up with
+a little fortune ten years later, a big-hearted, happy fellow. No one
+particularly knew it, but he'd been with a traveling minstrel show for
+those ten years. Now he's settled down, and I'd like to see a finer man
+than Zeb Dale."
+
+"Thank you," said Andy, "I'll think of what you say."
+
+Farmer Dale jogged on his way. Andy faced towards Centreville. It seemed
+as if something was pulling him along in that direction.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE CIRCUS
+
+
+At the first cross-roads a field wagon containing a farmer, his wife and
+half-a-dozen children whirled into Andy Wildwood's view. A merry
+juvenile chorus told Andy that they were bound for the circus.
+
+"Trace loose, mister," he called out as he noticed the trailing strap.
+
+"Whoa," ordered the driver, halting with a jolt, and Andy adjusted the
+faulty harness and smiled back cheerily at an eager little fellow in the
+wagon who inquired if he was going to the show, too.
+
+"Jump in, youngster, if ours is your way," invited the farmer.
+
+Andy promptly availed himself of the offer. He sat with his feet
+dangling over the tailboard. The farther he got from Fairview the less
+he thought of the manifold troubles and complications he was leaving
+behind him there.
+
+Andy did not intend to run away from home. He had business in view which
+demanded his presence in Fairview the next day. He was, however,
+resolved to go to Centreville. He would at least see the outside of the
+circus, and could put on the time until evening.
+
+It was only six miles from Fairview to Centreville, and they soon came
+in sight of the county seat.
+
+Andy caught more and more of the circus fever as they progressed. At
+every branch road a new string of vehicles joined the procession. They
+passed gay parties of ruralites on foot. Andy leaped down from the wagon
+with a "Thank you" to his host, at the first sight of the mammoth white
+tents over on the village common.
+
+This was the second day of the circus at Centreville. It was scheduled
+to remain one more day. Its coming was a great event for the town, and
+the place was crowded with pleasure-seekers.
+
+Andy reached the principal street just as the grand pageant went by. It
+was a spectacle that dazzled him. The music, the glitter, the pomp, the
+fair array of wild animals made him forget everything except that he was
+a boy enjoying a rare moment of existence.
+
+It was the inner life of the circus people, however, that attracted
+Andy. It was his great ambition to be one of them. He was not content to
+remain a spectator of the outside veneer of show life. He wanted to know
+something of its practical side.
+
+Andy did not dally around the ticket seller's booth, the side shows or
+the crowded main entrance of the show.
+
+Once, when a small circus had visited Fairview, he had gotten a free
+pass by carrying buckets of water to the cook's tent.
+
+He had now a vague hope that some such fortunate chance might turn up on
+this new occasion.
+
+Andy soon discovered, however, that the present layout was on a far
+different scale to the second-class show he had seen at Fairview.
+
+It was a city in itself. There were well-defined bounds as to the circus
+proper. Ropes strung along iron stakes driven into the ground kept
+curious visitors at a distance.
+
+The performers' tent, the horse tents, the cook's quarters and the
+sleeping space of the working hands were all guarded, and intruders
+warned to keep their distance.
+
+Everything was neat and clean, and a well-ordered system prevailed
+everywhere.
+
+The savory flavor of roasting meat made Andy desperately hungry. He saw
+a fat, aproned cook hastily gathering up some chips near a chopping
+block. Andy offered to split him some fresh wood, but received only an
+ungracious:
+
+"Get out! No trespassers allowed here."
+
+Andy wandered about for a long time. He greatly envied a lad about his
+own age who, adorned with a gilt-braided jacket, was walking a beautiful
+Arabian steed up and down.
+
+While he was staring at the circus boy, two popcorn boys connected with
+the show ran into him purposely and tripped him up. They went off with a
+laugh at his mishap. Andy concluded he was getting in the way as a
+gruff, grizzled old fellow with a bludgeon ran forward and yelled to him
+to make himself scarce.
+
+"I wish I could get into the show," murmured Andy "There seems no way to
+work it, though," he added disconsolately. "I wonder if they'd let me
+stay here? When that canvas flaps I can see right into the main tent."
+
+Andy was right near the canvassed passageway leading from the
+performers' tent to the main one.
+
+If no one disturbed him he could have occasional glimpses of what was
+going on inside, and that was better than nothing.
+
+Fate, however, was against him. He heard quick breathing, and turning
+saw the big watchman rapidly making for him, club uplifted.
+
+"Trying to get in under the canvas, eh?" roared the man.
+
+"Not I--I wouldn't steal anything, not even a sneak into the show,"
+declared Andy.
+
+He retreated promptly, but in doing so tripped over a guy rope and went
+flat.
+
+Andy got up, his mouth full of fine shavings, but grasping something his
+hand had come in contact with and had clutched in his fall.
+
+He ran out of range of the watchman, who brandished his stick at the lad
+threateningly. At a safe distance Andy inspected his find.
+
+"Only a handkerchief," he said, "and a rather mussy one at that. But
+there's something knotted in it. I wonder what it is?"
+
+It was a large dark-colored silk handkerchief. It had an odor of resin,
+and two of its corners were knotted.
+
+Untying one knot, Andy disclosed a mysterious device resembling two hard
+rubber shoe horns, joined in the centre by a concave piece of metal.
+
+He could not possibly imagine its use or value. Then Andy laughed
+outright. The other knot undone revealed a small rabbit's foot.
+
+"Not much of a find," he ruminated. "Queer kind of plunder, though.
+Wonder who owns it, and what that fandangle thing is?"
+
+Andy pocketed the find and was about to move away from the spot, when
+the flap of the performers' tent moved apart.
+
+A man came out, all arrayed in tights and spangles for the circus ring.
+He wore a loose robe over his show costume and big slippers on his feet.
+His hair was nicely combed and his face powdered up for the performance.
+
+He looked very anxious and excited. Andy at once saw that he was looking
+for something in great haste and suspense.
+
+The man walked all around outside of the performers' tent, eagerly
+scanning the ground. Then he enlarged the scope of his survey
+and search.
+
+"Hey, Marco!" sang out another man, sticking his head past the flap of
+the tent. "Time to get in line."
+
+"Wait a minute," retorted the other. "I've lost something, and I won't
+go on till I find it."
+
+The speaker looked positively distressed as he continued a disappointing
+search. A sudden idea struck Andy, and he drew the handkerchief and its
+belongings from his pocket.
+
+Just then the circus performer nearly ran against him. He looked up and
+made a forward jump. He seized the handkerchief and the two odd objects
+it contained with a fervent cry that astonished the bewildered Andy.
+
+"Give them to me," he exclaimed eagerly. "They're mine. Where did you
+find them? Boy, you've saved my life!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+CIRCUS TALK
+
+
+Andy knew that the circus actor's vehement statement was an
+exaggeration, still there was no doubting the fact that he was intensely
+pleased and grateful.
+
+"I found those things in the handkerchief over near the dressing tent,"
+explained Andy.
+
+"I must have dropped them there, or they got kicked out under the flap
+in hustling the baggage around," cried the man. "Here, kid."
+
+The speaker made a motion towards his side, as if reaching for a vest
+pocket.
+
+"I forgot," he laughed. "I have my ring togs on. Come along, I'll borrow
+some coin for you."
+
+"Oh, no," demurred Andy, "I don't want any pay."
+
+"Don't?" propounded the man in astonishment. "I want to do something for
+you. I'm the Man with the Iron Jaw, and that hard rubber device is what
+I hold in my mouth when I go up the rope, see?"
+
+"And that rabbit's foot?" insinuated Andy, guessing.
+
+"Hoodoo. Don't grin, kid. If you were in the profession you'd understand
+that a fellow values a charm that has carried him safe over Fridays,
+thirteenths, rotten trapezes and cyclones. We're a superstitious bunch,
+you know, and I'm no wiser than the rest. Why see here, of course you
+want to see the show, don't you?"
+
+"I just do," admitted Andy with alacrity--"if it can be arranged."
+
+"Come with me."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Andy readily followed after his gymnastic acquaintance. A word at the
+door flap of the performers' tent admitted them without challenge.
+
+Andy took a keen, interested look around. Near two stands holding silver
+starred boxes was a performer in costume, evidently the conjurer of the
+show. Beyond him, seated daintily on a large white horse, was a pretty
+woman of about thirty, waiting her call to the ring.
+
+A great-muscled fellow sat on a stool surrounded by enormous balls and
+dumb bells--the "Strong Man" of the circus.
+
+A trick elephant was being fed by its keeper at once side of the tent.
+Nearby was a young man dressed as a jockey, holding the chains leading
+to the collars of a dozen performing dogs.
+
+Andy had a good memory. He knew from her resemblance to the posters he
+had seen, that the lady on the white horse was Miss Stella Starr, "the
+dashing equestrienne."
+
+She seemed to be on good terms with everybody, particularly with Andy's
+new acquaintance.
+
+"Who is your friend, Marco?" she asked, as the man passed by her.
+
+He explained, with a great many excited gestures. Then he beckoned to
+Andy as the equestrienne smiled pleasantly at him.
+
+"You bunk right there, kid," said Marco, stowing Andy behind a pile of
+seat planks that lined the side of the canvassed passageway joining the
+performers' tent with the main one.
+
+Andy promptly climbed up on top of the heap of boards. The curtain that
+separated the two circus compartments was festooned at one side. Just
+beyond was the orchestra. Andy could look over their heads and past
+them, with a perfect view of the performing ring.
+
+He gave himself up so completely to the enjoyment of the grand privilege
+accorded him, that for one engrossing, bewildering hour he seemed in a
+dreamland of rare delight.
+
+Everything went smoothly and neatly. The various acts were new, and
+cleverly performed.
+
+When it came to Stella Starr's turn, Andy witnessed a second exhibition
+of the superstitious folly of these strange circus folk.
+
+The equestrienne sharply halted the man who led her horse forward for a
+dash into the ring.
+
+"Back him--instantly," she called out. "Right foot first over the dead
+line. I wouldn't start on a left foot _entree_ for the whole day's
+proceeds."
+
+The imperious mandate was obeyed, and Andy raptly witnessed some
+bareback riding that made his heart quicken and his eyes flash with
+pleasure and admiration.
+
+Miss Stella Starr had two acts. When she retired from the ring, kissing
+her little hands prettily to the applauding audience, the manager turned
+her horse again facing the curtain in the canvassed passageway.
+
+The equestrienne sank gracefully to a rest on the flank of the big white
+horse, patting him affectionately, while some hands began rolling great
+tubs into the ring.
+
+These were to form a pyramid, up one side of which and down the other
+the white horse was to pass.
+
+Suddenly, as Andy's interest was divided between the ring and the
+equestrienne, a sharp crack rang out. It was accompanied by a swishing,
+ominous, tearing sound.
+
+An uneasy murmur swayed the audience. The manager ran out into the ring,
+swiftly glanced at the centre pole, and drawing a whistle from his
+pocket gave three piercing blasts.
+
+"It's a wind storm," Andy heard some one remark.
+
+A second gust swayed the centre pole. The great spreads of canvas bulged
+and flapped. The audience arose in their seats.
+
+Andy saw the manager seize a great megaphone near the band stand. He
+shouted:
+
+"Preserve order. There is no danger. Keep your seats. It is only a
+passing gust of wind. Play! play!" he shouted frantically to the band.
+
+"Take care!" shouted the man, Marco, with a look through the outside
+flap, "she's coming again!"
+
+A sudden tumult fell on the air. Shrieks, yells, a great babel arose
+from the audience. The centre pole creaked and swayed dangerously. Then,
+with a sharp rip the canvas roof over Andy's head was wrenched from
+place and went sailing up into the air.
+
+A heavy wooden cross-piece running between two supports had been torn
+loose at one end. The rope securing it whipped about and struck Andy
+in the face.
+
+He dodged, and was about to leap to the ground, when a sharp cry from
+Stella Starr announced a new peril.
+
+The free end of the heavy cross piece was descending with the force of a
+driven sledge hammer. She was directly within range. Andy saw her
+danger, jumped erect, grabbed at the rope whipping about, and pulled it
+towards himself.
+
+As the equestrienne shrank to the neck of the trembling horse upon which
+she sat, the timber just grazed her spangled hair. It struck the ground
+and tore loose above. Its other end hit the pile of seat planks with
+a crash.
+
+Andy felt them topple. He tried to steady himself, to jump aside. He was
+caught in the tumble and went headlong to the sawdust, the planks
+falling on top of him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A WARM RECEPTION
+
+
+Andy Wildwood was knocked senseless. When he came back to consciousness
+he found himself lying on a mattress in a little space surrounded by
+canvas. It was one of the circus dressing rooms.
+
+He sniffed camphor, and one side of his head felt stiff and sore.
+Putting up his hand Andy discovered strips of sticking plaster there.
+
+"Was I hurt?" he asked, sitting up.
+
+"Circus doctor says not badly," promptly answered Marco, who stood by
+the mattress. "How is it, kid? No bones broken?"
+
+"Oh, no," answered Andy readily, getting to his feet. "Say, what
+happened? The wind storm--"
+
+"Gone over. It's sunshine outside now. A few hanks of thread will fix
+the rips. The show went on all right after the squall. But say, you're a
+daisy. That timber--oh, here she is to talk for herself."
+
+Miss Stella Starr put in an appearance just here. She was neatly dressed
+in street costume. Her eyes were very bright, and there was a grateful
+smile on her womanly face as she grasped both of Andy's hands.
+
+"You are a good boy," she said with enthusiasm. "Bring me a stool,
+Marco, I want to talk with him."
+
+Andy flushed with embarrassment, as the little lady went on to insist
+that but for his quick foresight and energy she might have missed her
+salary, lying in a hospital for many a long day. She was very anxious as
+to Andy's injuries, and looked greatly relieved to find them trifling.
+
+"Just a lump under the ear and a cut on one cheek," reported Andy
+indifferently. "They're worth having to see you ride, Miss."
+
+"There, Marco!" cried the equestrienne brightly, "that is the handsomest
+compliment I ever received."
+
+"The kid's a mascot," pronounced Marco in his heavy, earnest way. "He
+found my lost traps, and he maybe saved your life. What can we do for
+you, now?"
+
+Andy shook his head vaguely. His bright face clouded. The human sympathy
+of his new friends had warmed his heart. It chilled, as he thought of
+Fairview and what awaited him there, especially Aunt Lavinia.
+
+The quick witted equestrienne read his face like a book.
+
+"See here, boy," she said, laying her gloved hand winningly on Andy's
+sleeve, "what is your name?" and as Andy told her she added; "And what
+is your trouble?"
+
+"Do I look as if I had trouble?" inquired Andy with a forced smile.
+
+"Don't try to fool Mrs. Jones, Wildwood," advised Marco. "She's our
+keenest. Has a boy at school nearly as old as you, haven't you, Mary?"
+
+"Jones? Mary?" spoke Andy in some wonder. "I thought the lady's name was
+Stella Starr."
+
+"On the posters and in the ring, yes," laughed the equestrienne. "Come,
+Andy, make a clean breast of it. Have you gone circus-crazy, and run
+away from home?"
+
+"No ma'am, but I'd like to."
+
+"Oh, dear! I guess you boys are all alike," commented the equestrienne.
+"Why do you wish to leave home?"
+
+"It's a long story," said Andy, with a sigh.
+
+"Tell it, Wildwood," spoke Marco. "We will be glad to listen."
+
+"Yes, indeed," assented Stella Starr. "I am interested in you, Andy. You
+have been of great service to us. Let us help you, if we can."
+
+Andy told his story. Stella Starr laughed merrily at his mild escapades.
+Marco's big eyes opened widely as Andy made plain the fact that he was a
+very fair amateur acrobat.
+
+"Why, the kid is up to the trained average, if he can do all those
+things," he declared.
+
+Stella Starr studied Andy silently for a few minutes. Then she said:
+
+"Andy, I believe you are a good, truthful boy. I am sorry for you. You
+deserve a better home. I don't believe you will ever have it with
+your aunt."
+
+"Half-aunt," muttered Marco.
+
+"I do not consider you owe her any particular duty. You are not happy
+with her?"
+
+"No, ma'am, never," said Andy.
+
+"And I believe you would be happy with us."
+
+"Yes, I would," said Andy, with emotion. "I love the life here."
+
+"Very well, go back to Fairview just as you have planned. Arrange your
+affairs just as a clear conscience dictates to you. If fate leads you
+back here, come to me directly. I will speak to the manager and ask him
+to take you on with the show."
+
+Tears of longing and gratefulness came to Andy's eyes. He could not stop
+them.
+
+"You are good, kind people," he said in a muffled tone. "If I never see
+you again I shall never forget you."
+
+Stella Starr kissed Andy on the cheek in a motherly way. Marco followed
+the boy outside. He thumped him on the back with the farewell words,
+uttered with emphasis:
+
+"Cut for it, kid. Take my advice--it's good. You've got the making of a
+first-class ringer in you. Don't waste your ability in that humdrum town
+of yours."
+
+Andy started for Fairview in a daze. So much had happened since morning
+that he could recall it all only in a series of long mental pictures.
+The kindness and suggestions of his new-found friends kept him
+thinking deeply.
+
+It was nearly dusk when Andy entered Fairview. He steered clear of old
+comrades and familiar haunts. When he reached home it was by way of the
+rear fence.
+
+A light shone in the little kitchen. His aunt was bustling about in a
+brisk, jumpy way that told Andy she was full of excitement and
+bottled-up wrath.
+
+"Here goes, anyway," he said finally, vaulting the fence and reaching
+the woodshed.
+
+Andy took up a good armful of wood, marched right up to the back steps
+and through the open doorway. He placed his load behind the
+kitchen stove.
+
+"You graceless wretch!" were Miss Lavinia's first words.
+
+She had a cooking fork in her hand and with it she jabbed the air
+viciously.
+
+"Go up stairs instantly," she commanded next.
+
+"I'm not sleepy, and I'm hungry," said Andy respectfully enough, but
+firmly.
+
+He walked over to the set table and picked up two biscuits from a plate.
+
+"Put those down, you put those down!" screamed Miss Lavinia. "Will you
+mind me?"
+
+Andy pocketed the biscuits. He was taking wise precautions in view of
+past experiences with his termagant relative.
+
+The boy stood his ground, and his aunt stamped her foot. Then she
+reached behind the stove and took up a stick used as a carpet beater.
+Armed with this she advanced threateningly upon Andy.
+
+"Don't strike me, Aunt Lavinia," said Andy quickly. "I am getting too
+big for that. I won't stand it!"
+
+"You scamp! you disgrace!" shouted his irate relative, still advancing
+upon him.
+
+She beat at Andy, who snatched the stick from her hand, broke it in two
+and threw it out through the open doorway.
+
+"I will go to my room if you insist upon it," said Andy now. "I don't
+see the need of treating me like a dog, though."
+
+"Don't you?" screamed Miss Lavinia. "Oh, you precious rascal! Here I've
+worked my fingers off to keep you respectable, and you go and disgrace
+me shamefully. Go to your room, Andy Wildwood. We'll attend to this
+matter of yours in the morning."
+
+"What matter?" demanded Andy.
+
+"Never mind, now. Do as I say. There's a rod in pickle for you, young
+man, that may bring you to your senses this time."
+
+Andy preferred loneliness up stairs to nagging down stairs. He left the
+kitchen and reached his own room. He lit a candle and sat down on
+the bed.
+
+There was a sharp click at the door almost immediately. His aunt had
+stolen silently up the stairs and had bolted him in.
+
+"As if that would keep me if I wanted to get out very bad!" thought
+Andy, with a glance at the frail door. "Oh, but I'm tired of all this!
+I've made up my mind. I shall leave Fairview."
+
+Andy went to a shelf, felt in an old vase, and took out a key.
+
+He fitted it to the lower drawer of the bureau in the room. It was full
+of old clothes and papers that had belonged to his father.
+
+Finally Andy unearthed a little wooden box, and lifted it to the light.
+It held a lot of trinkets, and from among them Andy selected a large
+silver watch and chain. He also took out a small box. It was made of
+some very dark smooth wood, and its corners and center were decorated
+with carved pieces of gold and mother of pearl.
+
+"The watch and chain are solid silver," murmured Andy. "The box was
+given to father by his father. It is made of some rare wood that grows
+in the South Sea islands. The gold on it is quite thick. I am sure the
+bare metal on those things is worth more than thirty dollars."
+
+Andy carefully stowed the watch and little box in an inner pocket. Then
+he lay down on the bed to think, but without removing any of
+his clothing.
+
+He silently munched the biscuits. His face cleared as reflection led to
+determination. Andy planned to leave the house as soon as it was closed
+up for the night and Aunt Lavinia was asleep.
+
+"I can't stand it," he decided. "She says I'm a burden to her. I've got
+a show to enjoy myself and maybe make some money. Yes, it's Centreville
+and the circus by morning."
+
+Andy was more tired out than he had fancied. He fell asleep. As he woke
+up, he discovered that heavy footsteps tramping up the stairs had
+aroused him.
+
+He had caught the echo of lighter feet. There was rustling in the narrow
+entry outside.
+
+Andy sprang up and listened intently.
+
+"Aunt Lavinia and some one with her," he reflected. "I wonder who it can
+be?"
+
+Just then a gruff voice spoke out:
+
+"Is the boy in that room, Miss Lavinia?"
+
+"Yes," said Andy's aunt.
+
+"Then have him out, and let's have this unpleasant duty over and done
+with."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+"COASTING"
+
+
+The key turned in the lock. Andy's candle had remained lighted. As the
+door was pushed open Andy saw a big portly man standing behind his aunt.
+
+"Put on your clothes, Andy Wildwood," began Miss Lavinia.
+
+"I've got them on," answered Andy. "What do you want?"
+
+"Ask me that," broke in the man, stepping into view. "Sorry, Andy, but
+it's me that wants you. You know who I am."
+
+"Yes," nodded Andy, staring hard.
+
+He recognized the speaker as Dan Wagner, the village constable.
+Instantly the truth flashed over Andy. He turned to his aunt with a
+pale, stern face.
+
+"Are you going to let this man take me to jail?" he demanded.
+
+"Yes, I am," snapped Miss Lavinia. "You've gone just a little too far
+this time, Andy Wildwood."
+
+"What have I done that's so bad?" inquired Andy indignantly. "What is
+the charge against me?"
+
+"That's so, Miss Lavinia," observed the constable with a laugh. "There's
+got to be a specific charge, as I told you."
+
+"Charge!" sniffed Miss Lavinia scornfully. "I'll make a dozen of them.
+He's a bad, disobedient boy--"
+
+"When did I ever disobey you?" interrupted Andy, calmly keeping his
+temper.
+
+"Oh, you! He's got himself expelled from school."
+
+"That's no crime, 'cordin' to the statoots," declared the constable.
+
+"I don't care!" cried the angry spinster. "My duty is to keep this boy
+from going to ruin. You do yours. I explained it all to the judge. He
+said that if I, as his guardian, swore Andy was an incorrigible,
+unmanageable boy, he would send him to the parental school at Byron till
+he was reformed."
+
+Andy grew white to the lips. He fixed such a glance on his aunt that she
+quailed.
+
+"Shame on you!" he burst forth. "You my guardian! What did you ever
+guard for me, except too little clothes and victuals? I'm never out of
+the house after dark. I never refuse to do your hardest work. I even
+scrub for you. Well, I won't any longer. I have made up my mind to
+go away."
+
+"You hear that? you hear that?" cried Miss Lavinia. "He's going to run
+away from home!"
+
+"Home!" retorted Andy scornfully. "A fine home this has been for
+me--snapped at, found fault with, treated like a charity pauper. Do your
+duty, Mr. Wagner. But I warn you that no law can send me to the reform
+school. This woman is not my legal guardian. She is not rightfully even
+a relative. I have friends in Fairview, I tell you, and they won't see
+me wronged. I wonder what my poor dead father would say to you for
+all this?"
+
+Miss Lavinia gave a shriek. She fell into a chair and kicked her heels
+on the floor and went into hysterics.
+
+The constable looked in a friendly way at Andy. He liked the lad's pluck
+and independence. He recalled, too, how Andy had once led him to a quiet
+haystack, where he had slept himself sober instead of risking his
+position and making a public show of himself on the streets of Fairview.
+
+"See here, Miss Lavinia," he spoke, "I don't fancy treating Andy like a
+criminal. If I take him with me now I'll have to lock him up with two
+chicken thieves and a tramp. They're no good company for a
+homebred boy."
+
+"He deserves a lesson," declared Miss Lavinia. "He shall have it, too!"
+
+"Let him stay here till morning, then I'll come after him."
+
+"He won't be here. Didn't you hear him say he was going to run away from
+home?"
+
+"Haven't you got some safe place I can lock him up in?" suggested
+Wagner. "I've got to make you safe and sound, you know," observed the
+officer quite apologetically to Andy.
+
+"Yes, there is," reported Miss Lavinia after brief thought. "You wait a
+minute."
+
+She went away and returned with a bunch of keys. The constable beckoned
+to Andy to follow her, and he closed in behind.
+
+A steep, narrow staircase led to an attic room at the extreme rear of
+the house. This, as Andy knew, was his aunt's strong room.
+
+It had a heavy door secured by a padlock, and only one window. As Miss
+Lavinia unlocked the door and the candle illuminated the interior of the
+apartment, the constable observed grimly:
+
+"I reckon this will keep him safe and sound."
+
+Andy said nothing. He had made up his mind what he would do, and
+considered further talk useless.
+
+The apartment was littered up with chests, barrels and old furniture. In
+one corner was a pile of carpets. Andy walked silently over to these,
+threw himself down, and found himself in darkness as the door was again
+stoutly padlocked on the outside.
+
+"If anybody cared for me here it might be different," he observed. "As
+they don't, I must make friends for myself."
+
+In about half an hour Andy went to the window, It was a small one-pane
+sash. Looking out, he could trace the reflection from a light in his
+aunt's room on the shrubbery.
+
+Finally this light was extinguished. Andy waited a full hour. He heard
+the town bell strike twelve.
+
+The lad took out his pocket knife, opened its big blade, and in a few
+minutes had pried off the strip lining the sash. He removed the pane and
+set it noiselessly on the floor.
+
+As he stuck his head out through the aperture Andy looked calculating
+and serious.
+
+It was fully thirty feet to the ground, and no friendly projection
+offered help in a descent.
+
+It was furthermore a question if he could even squeeze through the
+window space.
+
+Andy had nothing to make a rope of. The old pieces of carpet could not
+be utilized in any way. If he could force his body through the window
+head first, it was a dive to go feet first on a dangerous drop.
+
+Andy investigated the aperture, experimented, took in the situation in
+all its various phases. Finally he decided what he would do.
+
+He had unearthed a long ironing board from a corner of the room. He
+pulled a heavy dresser up to the window, and opened one of its drawers a
+few inches.
+
+By slanting the ironing board, he managed to get its broad end out
+through the window. Then he dropped it flat, with its narrow end held
+firmly under the projecting drawer.
+
+Andy got flat on the board, squirmed along it, and just managed to
+squeeze through the window space.
+
+At the end of five minutes he found himself extended outside on the
+board. A touch might throw it out of position and drop him like a shot.
+Very carefully he arose to his feet and backed against the clapboards of
+the house.
+
+Andy felt sideways and up over his head. He soon located what he knew to
+be there--two lightning rod staples. The rod itself had rusted away. The
+staples had been used to hold up a vine. This drew bugs, Miss Lavinia
+declared, and had been torn down.
+
+Andy hooked his finger around one of the staples. He got one foot on the
+window sill clear of the board. The other foot he lifted in the air.
+
+Stooping and getting a hold on the side of the ironing board, Andy
+gently slid it out from its holding place and upright.
+
+He brought it and himself erect. Moving up his hand, he transferred its
+grasp to the second iron staple higher up the side of the house.
+
+Now Andy rested the board on his toes. He clasped it like a shield
+against his body, its broad end nearest his face.
+
+Beyond its edge he took a keen glance. The moon shone brightly. The
+nearest object it showed was a high, broad-branched thorn apple tree.
+
+It stood about twelve feet from the house, and its top was perhaps as
+far below his foothold.
+
+"It's my only show," said Andy. "I've got to coast it, or get all torn
+up."
+
+He let go his hold of the staple. Instantly he had a hand firmly
+grasping either side of the ironing board Andy dropped to a
+past-centre slant.
+
+Giving his feet a prodigious push against the window sill, he shot
+forward and downward.
+
+For an instant Andy sailed through the air. He feared he might dive
+short of the tree. He hoped he would land flat.
+
+The latter by luck or his own precision he did. The board struck the
+tree top.
+
+There was a sliding swish, a vast cracking of branches.
+
+His weight dropped one end of the ironing board. It landed against a big
+branch, and Andy found himself safely anchored in the tree top.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+GOOD-BYE TO FAIRVIEW
+
+
+Looking back at the attic window, Andy Wildwood wondered how he had ever
+made the successful descent.
+
+Any boy lacking his sense of athletic precision would have scored a
+dangerous fall. Andy now slowly worked his way down thrown the branches
+of the tree. He got a few sharp scratches, but was vastly pleased with
+himself when he landed safely on the ground.
+
+"Good-bye to Fairview!" he spoke with a stimulating sense of freedom,
+waving his hand across the scene in general. "I may not come back rich
+or famous, but I shall have seen the world."
+
+Andy did not turn in the direction of Centreville. He felt of the pocket
+containing his father's watch and the little box, and then headed
+straight for Millville.
+
+That was where the big scholar, Graham, lived. It was five miles away.
+Graham boarded with the farmer who had bought Mr. Dale's cow and calf.
+
+Andy had kept Graham in mind ever since he had agreed to pay for burning
+up the hay stack. It was about two o'clock when he reached his
+destination.
+
+The night he and his school companions had restored the little calf to
+its frantic mother, Andy had seen Graham in the window of his room in
+the old farmhouse.
+
+Andy now looked up at the window of this room. It was open. A trellis
+ran up its side. The house was dark and silent. He scaled the trellis
+and rested a hand on the window sill.
+
+"Mr. Graham," he called out softly. Then he repeated the call several
+times, gradually raising his voice.
+
+There was a rustle of bed clothes, a droning mumble. Andy called again.
+
+"What is it? who is there?" questioned Graham's tones.
+
+"It's me," said Andy. "Don't be disturbed. Just listen for a minute,
+will you?"
+
+"Eh! Is that Andy Wildwood?" exclaimed Graham.
+
+"Yes," answered Andy.
+
+A white-robbed figure came to the window and sat down in a chair there.
+Graham rubbed his eyes and stared wonderingly at the strange midnight
+visitor clinging to the window sill.
+
+"Why, what's the trouble, Andy?" he questioned in a tone of surprise.
+
+"It's trouble, yes, you can make sure of that," responded Andy with a
+little nervous catch in his voice. "I'm having nothing but trouble,
+lately. There's so much of it around here that I've concluded to get
+out of it."
+
+"How get out of it?" demanded Graham.
+
+"I've left home--for good. I want to leave a clear record behind me, so
+I've come to you. You don't mind my disturbing you this way, I hope?"
+
+"No--no, indeed," answered Graham promptly. "Run away, eh?"
+
+"Yes, I've got to. Aunt Lavinia has had me arrested; she wants to send
+me to reform school."
+
+"Why," exclaimed Graham indignantly, "that's a burning shame!"
+
+"I thought so. The constable was around last evening. He locked me in
+the attic for safe keeping, but I got free, and here I am, on my way
+to--to--on my way to find work."
+
+"Do you mean circus work?" guessed Graham quickly.
+
+"Why, yes, I do. I don't mind telling you, for you have always been a
+friend to us smaller boys."
+
+"Always will be, Andy."
+
+"I believe that. We all like you. It's this way: I think I have a chance
+to join a show, and I want to, bad. I shall be paid something. When I
+am, I want to send it to you."
+
+"To me? What for, Andy?"
+
+"Well, I smashed the desk and pulled down the chimney at the
+schoolhouse, you know."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I calculate that damage amounts to about ten dollars. I burned down a
+haystack belonging to farmer Dale yesterday. Twenty dollars, he says.
+I've agreed to pay him, and I want you to see the school trustees to-day
+and explain to them that I'll pay for the desk and the chimney. I told
+Mr. Dale I would give him my note. I can't just now, but I will mail
+one, signed, to you."
+
+"Will Dale accept it?" asked Graham.
+
+"Yes, if I secure it."
+
+"Secure it, how?"
+
+"That's why I came to see you," explained Andy. "I've got in my pocket a
+silver watch and chain and a box ornamented with gold. They were left to
+me by my father. I want you to take the articles. Explain to Mr. Dale
+and the school trustees about them--that you are to hold them for the
+benefit of my creditors, see?"
+
+"That's quite business-like, Andy."
+
+"I will certainly send you some money. As soon as I do, divide it up
+with the school and Mr. Dale. I will keep you posted as to my
+whereabouts, but keep it a secret. Will you do all this for me?"
+
+"Gladly, Andy."
+
+"Here are the things," continued Andy, handing over the contents of his
+pocket. "And thank you."
+
+"Don't mention it. You're all right, Andy," declared Graham in a warm,
+friendly way. "I shan't encourage you to run away from home, but I won't
+try to stop you. Have you got any money?"
+
+"Why, no," answered Andy.
+
+"You wait a minute, then."
+
+Graham took the watch and the box and retired from the window. As he
+returned he pressed a folded piece of paper between Andy's fingers.
+
+"Take that," he said.
+
+"What is it?" asked Andy.
+
+"It's a five-dollar bill."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Graham--"
+
+"No nonsense, Andy. I know from practical experience what it is to start
+out in the world penniless. I have the money saved up for two years'
+board and schooling. I won't miss that little amount until way along
+next fall. You will have paid it back long before that, I'll warrant."
+
+"You bet I will--and you're awful good to me!" declared Andy heartily.
+
+"Just one more word, Andy," resumed Graham earnestly. "If you are
+determined to be a circus tumbler, be the best or nothing. If you like
+enjoyment, made it good, clean fun. I'm not afraid of you. I'm only
+giving the advice of a fellow older than you, who has learned that it
+pays to be right and do right in the long run."
+
+When Andy once more stood in the road with his royal friend's "Good
+luck, old fellow!" still echoing in his ears, his heart was very full.
+
+"It's mighty good of him," murmured Andy, safely stowing away the
+five-dollar bill. "I'll deserve his good opinion, see if I don't!"
+
+Andy walked on a mile or two further. Climbing a fence he made a snug
+bed alongside a convenient haystack.
+
+The sun was shining brightly when the lad awoke, refreshed and full of
+spirit and hope. He somehow felt as though he was beginning the most
+eventful day of his life.
+
+Andy turned his face in the direction of Centreville. He had no idea of
+going direct there, however, that day.
+
+He did not know how many people from Fairview might have seen him there
+the day previous. He did know that if Aunt Lavinia was determined to
+pursue him, the first thing she would think of was his circus
+predilections.
+
+Andy planned cautiously and with wisdom. From watching the circus
+posters he knew it's route. Centreville was in another county from
+Fairview. But Clifton, the next point of exhibition, was in
+another state.
+
+"That suits me," he murmured.
+
+Andy had an idea that once safely over the state line the law could not
+reach him so readily as on home territory.
+
+He knew the neighboring towns pretty fairly, and he fixed on Clifton as
+his destination. Clifton was about eight miles from Centreville.
+
+Andy decided he would go there and put in the time until next morning.
+
+At midnight the show would pull up stakes at Centreville. He would be on
+hand to welcome its arrival at Clifton.
+
+"Then I will see Miss Starr and Mr. Marco," he thought. "If the circus
+manager will only take me on, I'll fall into great luck."
+
+Andy got to Clifton about noon. He changed the five-dollar bill, buying
+a cheap but big dinner, for he was nearly famished.
+
+He learned where the circus was to exhibit, and went to the spot. Some
+workers were already there, digging trenches, distributing sawdust
+and the like.
+
+Andy volunteered to help them. It would be good practice in the way of
+experience, he told himself. Until four o'clock in the afternoon he was
+quite busy about the place.
+
+He had heard so much circus talk during his free labors that his mind
+was more full of the show than ever.
+
+Andy had heard one of the workers describe to a new hand all the
+excitement, bustle and novelty attending a jump from one town
+to another.
+
+He strolled about the place but grew restive. Just before dusk he bought
+some crackers and cheese, filled his pockets with the eatables, and
+started down the road leading towards Centreville.
+
+Andy met an advance guard of the circus about two miles out of Clifton.
+Some wagons carried the cooking camp outfit. A little farther on he was
+met by some menagerie wagons.
+
+"They'll come in sections," ruminated Andy.
+
+"The big tent people won't make a start till after the evening
+performance. I won't risk going any farther. There's an open barn near
+the road. I'll take a little snooze, and wake up in time to join the
+procession of big loads."
+
+Andy secured his little cash reserve in a marble bag. He ate some lunch
+and made for the open structure he had observed.
+
+It was an old doorless barn near a hay press. A great many bales were
+stack up at one side. Climbing among these Andy found a cozy boxed in
+space, carried some loose hay to it, and composed himself for sleep.
+
+"Twenty cents a day is pretty economical living," he reflected, as he
+studied the stars visible through a chink in the roof. "I wonder what
+the circus people pay a beginner?"
+
+Wondering about this, and a variety of similar themes, Andy dozed, but
+was suddenly awakened by the sharp snap of a match and a brief flare.
+
+He got up and peered over the edge of the bales of hay that enclosed his
+resting place.
+
+The moon was shining brightly. Outlined at the open doorway of the barn
+was a man. He leaned against a post, had just lit a cigar, and was
+looking intently down the road in the direction of Centreville.
+
+Some wagons rattled by and the man drew inside the barn out of view.
+Andy made out that he was well-dressed and very active and nervous in
+his manner.
+
+"That man is waiting for some one," decided Andy, getting
+interested--"yes, and he belongs to the show, I'll bet."
+
+Andy reasoned this out from the facility with which the man hummed out a
+tune he had heard the circus orchestra play.
+
+The man paced restively to and fro. He went out into the road and looked
+far down it. He returned to the barn and resumed his impatient pacing
+to and fro.
+
+Nearly an hour went by in this fashion. Andy began to consider that he
+had become curious without much reason. He was about to drop back again
+to his cozy bed when he heard the man utter an exclamation of
+satisfaction.
+
+He rubbed his hands and braced up, and as a new figure turned from the
+road spoke in a cautious but distinct tone.
+
+"That you, Murdock?"
+
+"It's me, sure enough, Daley," came the reply.
+
+"S--sh--don't use my name here. You know--"
+
+"All right. No one likely to hear us in this lonely spot, though," spoke
+the newcomer addressed as Murdock.
+
+"Well, what have you to report?" questioned Daley eagerly.
+
+"It's all right."
+
+"You've fixed it?"
+
+"Snug and sure. The show will have a big sensation to-night not down on
+the bills."
+
+The listening Andy heard the man called Daley utter a gratified chuckle.
+
+"Good," he said.
+
+"And there'll be a vacancy on the Benares Brothers' team to-morrow,"
+added Daley, "so give me the twenty dollars."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+A FIRST APPEARANCE
+
+
+Andy pricked up his ears with a good deal of animation. The jubilant
+statement of the fellow called Murdock did not sound honest.
+
+"I'm taking your word for it," spoke Daley.
+
+He had drawn something from his pocket, evidently a roll of bills, for
+as he extended it Murdock said eagerly.
+
+"Twenty dollars?"
+
+"Yes. Tell me how you fixed it."
+
+"Why," answered Murdock with a cruel laugh, "you was laid off as one of
+the Benares Brothers up at the show on account of drinking, wasn't you?"
+
+Daley moodily nodded his head.
+
+"They put on Thacher in your place. You and him are probably the only
+two men in the profession who can do the somersault trapeze act with old
+Benares. That puts you out of a job, for you're no good single."
+
+"I guess that is right. Thacher takes the bread out of my mouth, sink
+him!"
+
+"You say, 'twenty dollars' if I fix Thacher so he can't act well,"
+declared Murdock in a cold-blooded way that made Andy shiver, "he won't
+act for a spell after to-night, I'm thinking."
+
+"Come to the point--what did you do?"
+
+"Why, after doing their regular stunt on a separate trapeze, Thatcher
+somersaults and catches a bar swing from centre. He hangs by his knees
+and Benares swings from aloft and catches his hands in his dive for
+life. Well, the minute Thacher lands on the centre trapeze to-night down
+he goes forty feet head-first. It's broken limbs or nothing, for I cut
+the bar free first thing after the afternoon performance. It's held in
+place now by only two little pieces of thread that a child's finger
+could break."
+
+"Um!" remarked Daley. "I guess I'll cut for it. They think I'm a hundred
+miles away. It mustn't be known that I was this near the circus or
+they'd suspect me. I presume they'll be wiring for me to come back now."
+
+"Oh, sure. They won't suspect me, either. I sneaked in the big tent and
+fixed the trapeze when no one was about. See here, Daley, if you do get
+your job back you'd ought to give me an extra ten."
+
+"I'll see about it," said Daley.
+
+The two worthies walked from the place. Andy watched them cross fields
+away from the main road and away from both Clifton and Centreville.
+
+Little thrills of horror ran all over the boy. This was his first view
+of the dark, plotful side of circus life, and it appalled him.
+
+"Why," he exclaimed, "it may be murder. Oh, those wretches! The Benares
+Brothers. I saw them yesterday. I remember the dive for life. I had to
+hold my breath when one man made that somersault, away up at the top of
+the tent. It was more than thrilling when he caught the other trapeze
+with his knees. It was curdling when his partner made his dive for life.
+One second over time, one miss of an inch, and it looked sure death. And
+now that trapeze has been tampered with, and--"
+
+The excited Andy did not finish the sentence. He forgot all his own
+plans and the possible danger of arrest at Centreville.
+
+He jumped down from the hay bales and dashed out of the barn. Andy sped
+along the highway circus-ward at the top of his speed.
+
+The situation had appealed to him in a flash. The two plotters had
+talked in plain English. There was no misunderstanding their motives
+and acts.
+
+Andy had a vivid picture in his mind--the big circus tent four miles
+away. He could recall just where the Benares Brothers act came on the
+programme.
+
+"It was about ninth down the list yesterday afternoon," he mused,
+softly. "They begin the show about eight o'clock. It's now about nine. I
+calculate the Benares Brothers come on this evening at about a quarter
+to ten. Four miles. I can run that in half an hour. Yes, I shall be
+in time."
+
+Andy pressed his arms to his sides, took breath to conserve his staying
+powers, and maintained a steady, telling pace.
+
+The lights of Centreville began to show nearer. He heard a town bell
+strike the half-hour as he came in sight of the grounds and the
+illuminated big tent of the show.
+
+The band inside was blaring away. The side shows were not doing much
+business. Some were getting ready for the removal. There were not many
+people around the main entrance. Andy, quite breathless, rushed up to
+the ticket taker there.
+
+"I want to go in for just a minute," he said--"I must see the manager."
+
+"Cut for it--no gags go here," retorted the man rudely.
+
+"It's pretty important. Here," began Andy. Then he paused in dismay. "Oh
+dear!" he spoke to himself, "I never put on my coat, that I used as a
+pillow back in that barn."
+
+In the hurry and excitement of the occasion Andy had left the coat among
+the hay bales. Just before arranging his bed he had stowed the marble
+bag containing the balance of Graham's five dollars in a pocket of
+the garment.
+
+He could not therefore pay his fare into the show. Only for an instant,
+however, was Andy daunted.
+
+He suddenly realized that he could get more promptly to the manager or
+the ringmaster from the rear.
+
+He ran around the big white mountain of canvas till he reached the
+performers' tent. Patrolling outside of it was a club-armed watchman.
+
+"Please let me in," said Andy hurriedly. "I want to see the manager,
+quick."
+
+"Yes, they all do. G'wan! Games don't go here."
+
+"No, no, I'm not trying to dead-head it," cried Andy. "Please call Mr.
+Marco or Miss Starr. They know me--"
+
+"G'wan, I tell you. I'm too old a bird to get caught by chaff.
+Get--now."
+
+The watchman struck Andy a sharp rap over the shoulders. Andy was in
+desperation. He was started to run around to some other of the minor
+tents, when a shifting slit in the canvas gave him a momentary view of
+the interior of the big circus tent.
+
+"Oh," cried Andy, wringing his hands, "the very act is on--the Benares
+Brothers! I must act at once!"
+
+Andy made a rush, intent on getting under the canvas at all hazards. He
+checked himself. If he succeeded in eluding the watchman outside, he
+would have difficulty in getting to the manager. He might be captured
+inside at once. He stood staring at the tent top in extreme anxiety
+and suspense.
+
+Shadows aloft enlightened him as to-what was going on. The Benares
+Brothers were mounting aloft. He made them out bowing gracefully, pulled
+up on the toe coils. He saw their outlines, trapeze-seated. The
+orchestra struck up a new tune. The act was about to commence.
+
+"I must stop them--I will warn them!" panted Andy with resolution. "If I
+got to the manager he might not understand me or believe me. It might be
+too late--there is not a minute to spare."
+
+Andy was quivering with excitement, his eyes flashing, his face flushed.
+
+He ran towards a guy rope, sprang up, caught at it, and hand over hand
+rapidly ascended it.
+
+Where it tapped the lower dip of the upper canvas, he transferred his
+grasp.
+
+A seam was here, held together by hook and ring clear to the gap at the
+centre pole. This seam, Andy discerned, ran right over to the trapezes.
+
+Andy scaled the course of the seam with the agility of a monkey, hooking
+the rings with his fingers and pulling himself up. The canvas quivered,
+shook and gave, but he did not heed that.
+
+He came to the open gap around the centre pole, seized the bound edge of
+the canvas, and gazed down.
+
+Ten feet across was old Benares, just getting ready for some evolutions.
+Directly under Andy was the trapeze holding the man he supposed to be
+Thacher. Over his head swung a smaller trapeze.
+
+Andy lay flat along the sloping canvas and stuck his head further down.
+
+"Mr. Thacher! Mr. Thacher!" he shouted.
+
+"Eh, why, hello! Who are you?"
+
+In wonderment the trapezist gazed up at the earnest, agitated face
+gazing down at him.
+
+At that juncture there was an ominous rip. Andy's weight it seemed had
+pressed too forcibly down upon a rotted section of the canvas.
+
+A strip about a foot wide tore free, binding and all, from the edge
+nearest the centre pole. It split six feet sheer. Andy's feet went over
+his head, but he kept a tight grip on the end of the strip.
+
+Dangling in mid air sixty feet above the saw-dust ring, Andy swung in
+space dizzy-headed, his first appearance before the circus public.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+SAWDUST AND SPANGLES
+
+
+Andy stared down at a sea of faces. They seemed far away. The circus
+manager had stepped briskly out into the ring.
+
+In great wonderment he stood gazing aloft. The audience swayed, and a
+general murmur filled the air. Many pointed upwards. Some arose from
+their seats, craning their necks in excitement.
+
+The orchestra dropped the music to low, undecided notes. Puzzled
+spectators wondered if the strange appearance above was part of some new
+novelty change in the programme.
+
+Andy clung to the dangling strip of canvas for dear life. The trapezist,
+Thacher, stared at him in profound astonishment. He was about to speak,
+to demand an explanation, when there was a second ripping sound.
+
+"Look out!" cried Thacher sharply.
+
+Andy saw what was happening. The canvas strip that had torn free
+lengthwise was now splitting its breadth.
+
+In another moment a mere filament of cloth would hold Andy suspended. He
+must act, and act quickly, or take a plunge sixty feet down.
+
+Andy did not lose his presence of mind. Just the same as if he was on
+the rafters of the old barn at home, or practicing on a rope strung from
+two high tree tops, as had been many a time the case, he calculated his
+chances and set his skill at work.
+
+He ventured a brief swing on the frail strip of canvas. As it finally
+tore free in his hand, Andy dropped it. He had got his momentum,
+however. It was to swing sideways and down. The next instant Andy was at
+the side of Thacher. One hand caught and held to a rope of the trapeze.
+There Andy anchored, resting one knee on the edge of the performing bar.
+
+"You're a good one!" muttered the trapezist in wonder. "Don't get
+rattled, now."
+
+"Not while I've got my grip. Say," projected Andy, "I'm sorry to
+interrupt the performance, but it's a matter of life or death."
+
+"Eh?" uttered Thacher in a puzzled way. "What's up?"
+
+"Do you know a man named Murdock?"
+
+"Ring man, fired last week. Yes. What of it?"
+
+"Do you know a man named Daley?"
+
+"Fired, too--for drinking. I took his place on this team."
+
+"They hate you. They have plotted to disable you. The trapeze
+yonder--Murdock has cut the ropes, secured the bar with thread, and the
+slightest touch will send a performer to the ring with broken limbs."
+
+"What! Are you crazy or fooling? Doped the rigging? Why, that's murder,
+kid!"
+
+"They have done it just the same. Listen."
+
+Faster than he had ever talked before Andy told of the conversation he
+had overheard in the old hay barn. He hurriedly recited his failure in
+reaching the manager. He told of his rapid ascent of the top canvas. The
+present denouement had resulted.
+
+Under his face rouge Thacher showed the shock of vivid emotions. The
+murmur below was increasing. The manager was looking up impatiently.
+
+Old Benares, across on his trapeze, regarded his partner in
+bewilderment.
+
+Suddenly Thacher shot out some words towards him. It was a kind of
+circus gibberish, mixed with enough straight English to enlighten Andy
+that his story was being imparted to Old Benares.
+
+"You must get me out of this," said Andy. "The audience is becoming
+restive."
+
+Thacher extended his hand, the back showing, in the direction of the
+orchestra. The band, at this signal, struck up a quick, lively tune.
+
+"Get clear on the bar," directed Thacher rapidly, giving Andy more room.
+"Say," he added, in some surprise at Andy's cleverness, "you seem at
+home all right. Performer?"
+
+"Oh, no--only a little amateur practice."
+
+"It's given you the right nerve. Now then, you can't get up again,
+you've got to go down. Want to do it gracefully?"
+
+"Sure," smiled Andy, perfectly calm and collected.
+
+The situation rather delighted him than otherwise. He had supreme
+confidence in his companion, and felt that he was in safe hands.
+
+"Are you grit for a swing?" pursued Thacher.
+
+"Try me," said Andy.
+
+Thacher called over some further words to old Benares. The latter at
+once swung down from his trapeze, holding on by his knees, both hands
+extended towards his partner.
+
+"Do just as I say," directed Thacher to Andy. "Let me get you under the
+arms. Double your knees up to your chin. Can you hold yourself
+that way?"
+
+"Yes," assented Andy.
+
+"Now!" spoke Thacher sharply.
+
+The next instant the performer had dropped Andy in his clasp. He had
+slipped an ankle halter to one of his own limbs.
+
+This alone held him. Head downward, he lightly swung Andy to and fro.
+Andy rolled up like a ball ready for the next move.
+
+All this had consumed less than two minutes. Now the audience believed
+Andy's sensational appearance a regularly arranged feature of the
+performance.
+
+The oddity of a boy in ordinary dress coming into the act, as Andy had
+done, excited the profoundest interest and attention.
+
+The manager in the ring below stood like one petrified, puzzled beyond
+all comprehension.
+
+The orchestra checked its music. An intense strain pervaded. The
+audience swayed, but that only. There was a profound silence.
+
+"One, two, three," said Thacher, at intervals.
+
+"Come," answered old Benares.
+
+At the end of a long, swift swing of his body, Thacher let go of Andy,
+who spun across a ten feet space that looked twenty to the audience
+below. Andy felt a light contact, old Benares' double grip caught
+under his arms.
+
+The act was the merest novice trick analyzed by an expert, but it set
+the audience wild.
+
+A prodigious cheer arose, clapping of hands, juvenile yells of
+admiration. The band came in with a ringing march. Old Benares righted
+himself, Andy with him.
+
+"Su-paarb!" he said. "Can you hold on alone--one little minute?"
+
+"Sure," said Andy.
+
+The trapezist reached up and untied the descending rope, secured it to
+the bar, and shouted to those standing below.
+
+Two ring hands ran out into the sawdust, caught the other end, and held
+it perfectly taut.
+
+"Can you slide down it?" asked Benares.
+
+Andy's eyes sparkled.
+
+"Say, Mr. Benares," he replied, "if I wasn't rattled by all that crowd,
+I could do it head first. I've done the regular, one leg drop,
+fifty times."
+
+"You are admirable--an ex-paart!" declaimed old Benares. "Who are you,
+anyway?"
+
+"Only Andy Wildwood. Do you think I could ever do a real circus act?"
+
+"Do I think--hear them yell! You have made a hit. Good boy. Be careful.
+Go."
+
+Andy essayed an old rope performance he had seen done once, and had many
+times practiced.
+
+This was to secure one leg around the rope, throw himself outwards, fold
+his arms, and wind round and round the rope, slowly descending.
+
+The orchestra caught the cue, and kept time with appropriate music. A
+second hush held the audience. Without a break, Andy descended the forty
+odd feet of cable.
+
+Nearing its end, he caught at the rope to steady himself. Then he
+gracefully leaped free of it to the sawdust, and made a profound bow to
+the audience amid wild thunders of applause.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+AN ARM OF THE LAW
+
+
+The circus manager followed Andy, as the latter darted past the band
+stand and into the passageway leading to the performers' tent.
+
+His face was a blank of wonderment. The ringmaster joined him, and so
+did one or two others as he hurried after Andy.
+
+They found the latter holding to a guy rope, Andy's head was spinning.
+The reaction from intense excitement made him weak and breathless for
+some moments.
+
+The audience was still in a pleasant flutter of commotion over the
+unique act that had caught their fancy.
+
+The Benares Brothers went on with their performance, They cut out "the
+dive for life," but they made up for it by some dazzling aerial
+evolutions that thrilled the spectators, and everybody seemed satisfied.
+
+Five minutes later they joined the group crowding around Andy. The
+manager had just finished questioning the lad as to details of the
+remarkable story he had told.
+
+His face was stern and angry as he uttered some quick words to the
+ringmaster. Then the latter, taking a weighted coiled-up toe rope in his
+hand, went out into the ring.
+
+From where he was Andy could see this flung aloft. It caught across the
+bar of the "doped" trapeze.
+
+At a touch this latter came hurtling to the ground. Old Benares,
+watching also, trembled with intense anger.
+
+"It is infamoos!" he declared. "Where should my partner be, but for this
+boy?"
+
+The ringmaster examined the loosened trapeze bar. Just as Andy had
+stated, two slight threads alone had held it to the supporting ropes.
+
+Thacher laid a friendly, grateful hand on Andy's shoulder. He was too
+full of emotion to speak. Andy looked up and smiled brightly.
+
+"Good thing I was around, wasn't it?" he said carelessly. "Oh, there's
+Mr. Marco."
+
+The Man with the Iron Jaw came up to the group at this juncture.
+
+"You, Andy Wildwood!" he said. "I heard of the trapeze. So it is you
+again? Come with me. No, don't keep him," continued Marco to Thacher in
+a hurried way that made Andy curious. "You can see him again.
+Come, lad."
+
+"What's the trouble, Mr. Marco?" asked Andy.
+
+Marco did not answer. He kept hold of Andy's arm and led him to the
+rear. About to enter the performers' tent he dodged back.
+
+"Keep close to me," he directed in a tone of suppressed excitement.
+"Quick, Wildwood--out this way. Hurry, now."
+
+He had darted towards the bottom of the canvas strip siding the
+passageway. Lifting this up, he thrust Andy under it. Crawling after him
+and arising to his feet, he again grasped Andy's arm.
+
+Headed for the open space the main entrance faced, Marco suddenly jerked
+Andy to one side. He now made swiftly for some small tents abutting the
+performers' tent.
+
+"Hey! hi! hello!" some one had yelled out at them, and Andy saw two
+skulking forms making towards them.
+
+A third figure joined them. Andy discerned evident pursuit in their
+manner and actions.
+
+"Keep with me. Run in," directed Marco.
+
+He had thrust Andy into one of the little tents the boy recognized as a
+dressing room. Marco dropped the flap and stood outside.
+
+"Where's the boy gone to?" puffed out a labored voice.
+
+"Gracious!" exclaimed Andy, under cover, but with a gasp of sheer
+dismay. "I understand now."
+
+Andy recognized the tones of this last speaker. They belonged to Wagner,
+the village constable of Fairview.
+
+"He's in that little tent," spoke another voice.
+
+"Surround it," ordered Wagner. "Here, you stand aside. The boy I've been
+looking for all day is in that tent. I want him."
+
+"Hold on," retorted Marco. "This is private circus property."
+
+"Yes, and I'm a public officer, I'd have you know!" said Wagner. "No
+use. Don't interfere with the course of justice, or you'll get
+into trouble."
+
+There was no light in the tent. The many flaring gasoline torches
+outside, however, cast a radiance that enabled Andy to pretty accurately
+make out the situation.
+
+He traced two shadowy figures making a circuit of the tent. He could see
+Marco push back Wagner.
+
+The latter was unsteady of gait and voice. Andy theorized that he had
+been commissioned by his aunt to pursue him.
+
+Wagner had come down to Centreville with two assistants. Their expenses
+were probably paid in advance, and they had made a kind of individual
+celebration of the trip.
+
+"I've been looking for that boy all day," now spoke Wagner.
+
+"I know you have," answered Marco, standing like a statue at the door of
+the tent.
+
+"He's a fugitive from justice. I'm bound to have him. I'm an arm of the
+law."
+
+"What's he done?" inquired Marco.
+
+"He's nearly broken his poor old aunt's heart."
+
+"I didn't ask about his aunt's heart. What's he done?"
+
+"Oh, why--hum, that's so. Well, he's been expelled from school because
+of his crazy circus capers."
+
+"Indeed. I'm a circus man. Do you observe anything particularly crazy
+about me?" demanded Marco. "Say, my friend, you get out of this. I'm
+Marco, the Man with the Iron Jaw. It won't be healthy for me to tackle
+you, and I will if you make yourself obstreperous. You won't get that
+boy until you show me convincingly that you have a legal right to
+do so."
+
+"Legal right? Why!" cried Wagner, drawing out a paper, "there's my
+warrant."
+
+"Let me look at it, please. Oh," said Marco, examining the document.
+"Issued in another county. We're pretty good lawyers, us show folks, and
+I can tell you that you will have to get a search warrant issued in this
+county before you dare set a foot in that tent."
+
+The Fairview constable was nonplussed. Marco was right, and Wagner knew
+it. He threshed about, fumed and threatened, and finally said:
+
+"All right. I guess you know the law. We may have no right to enter that
+tent without a local search warrant, but the minute we get the boy
+outside we can take him on sight."
+
+"You won't have the chance," observed Marco.
+
+"We'll see. Hey," to his two assistants, "keep a close watch. I'm going
+for a local search warrant. Don't let Andy Wildwood leave that tent. The
+minute he does, nab him. Mister, I hereby notify you that these two men
+are my regularly appointed deputies."
+
+"All right," nodded Marco calmly.
+
+"Watch out, boys. I won't be gone half-an-hour."
+
+At that moment a waddling man came up smoking an immense pipe.
+
+"Ha," he said to Mr. Marco, "I vant mine drums."
+
+"Wait a minute, Snitzellbaum," directed Marco.
+
+Marco held the newcomer at bay until Wagner had disappeared in the
+direction of the town.
+
+Then, leaning over, he whispered in the ear of the rotund musician.
+
+"Ha! ho! hum! vhat? ho--ho! ha--ha!"
+
+"Hush!" warned Marco, with a quick glance at the constable's deputies
+patrolling up and down. "Will you do it?"
+
+"Vill I--oh, schure! Ha-ha! ho-ho! Mister Marco, you are von chenyus."
+
+"Want your drum, eh?" spoke Marco in a loud tone. "Well, go in and get
+it."
+
+Andy knew something was afoot from what he observed. He hoped it was in
+the line of preventing his return to Fairview.
+
+In about five minutes the fat German came out of the tent, lugging his
+big bass drum with him.
+
+"I put him on dot vagon," he puffed. "Good night, Mr. Marco. Vat dey do
+mit dot poy in dere, hey?"
+
+"Oh, I'll attend to him," declared Marco.
+
+Another half-hour went by. At its end Wagner came hurrying up to the
+spot. He had a companion with him, a keen-eyed, shrewd-faced fellow,
+evidently a local officer.
+
+"I have a search warrant here," said the latter.
+
+"All right," nodded Marco accommodatingly, "go on with your search."
+
+"Told you I'd get that boy," announced Wagner, with a chuckle lifting
+the flap of the tent. "Say! How's this? Andy Wildwood is gone!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+ON THE ROAD
+
+
+"Come oud!" said Hans Snitzellbaum.
+
+"I'm glad to," answered Andy Wildwood.
+
+He took a long, refreshing draught of pure air, and stood up and
+stretched his cramped limbs with satisfaction.
+
+When the Man with the Iron Jaw had whispered to the fat musician outside
+the dressing tent guarded by Wagner's assistants, he had asked him to
+get Andy out of the clutches of the constable.
+
+The fat sides of Hans Snitzellbaum shook with jollity, and his merry eye
+twinkled at the hint conveyed by Andy's staunch friend.
+
+When Hans came inside the tent, a whispered word to Andy was sufficient
+to make the young fugitive understand what was coming.
+
+Hans removed the top head of his big bass drum. Andy snuggled along the
+rounded woodwork of the instrument, and the drum head was replaced.
+
+The double load was a pretty heavy one for the portly musician to
+handle, but all went well.
+
+He got away from the dressing tent without arousing the suspicions of
+the constable's assistants. The drum was hoisted to the top of a moving
+wagon at some distance. Andy was rather crowded and short of breath, but
+he lay quiet and serene as the wagon started up.
+
+They must have traveled four miles before the musician's welcome
+invitation to "come oud" followed a second removal of the drum head.
+
+Andy looked about him. They were slowly traversing the main road leading
+from Centreville to Clifton.
+
+There was bright moonlight, and the general view was interesting and
+picturesque. Ahead and behind a seemingly interminable caravan was
+in motion.
+
+Chariots, cages, vehicles holding tent paraphernalia, a calliope, ticket
+wagons, horses, mules, ponies, seemed in endless parade. Performers and
+general circus employees thronged the various vehicles.
+
+That in which Andy now found himself was a wagon with high, slatted
+sides, piled full of trunks, mattresses, seat cushions and curtains.
+
+The fat musician reclined in a dip in the soft bedding; his bulky body
+had formed. Over beyond him lay a sad-faced man in an exhausted slumber,
+looking so utterly done out and ill that Andy pitied him.
+
+A boy about Andy's own age, and two men whose attire and general
+appearance suggested side show "spielers," or those flashily dressed
+fellows who announce the wonders on view inside the minor canvases, lay
+half-buried among some gaudy draperies.
+
+The two men lay with their high silk hats held softly by both hands
+across their breasts. The circus tinge was everywhere. One of them in
+his sleep was saying: "Ziripa, the Serpent Queen. Step up, gentlemen.
+Eats snakes like you eat strawberry shortcake. Eats 'em alive! Bites
+their heads off!"
+
+As the wagon jolted on Hans comfortably smoked a pipe fully four feet
+long. His twinkling little eyes fairly laughed at Andy as the latter
+stepped out of the drum.
+
+"Hey, you find him varm, hey?" he asked.
+
+"I'd have smothered if I hadn't kept my mouth close to that vent hole,"
+explained Andy. "Is it all right for me to show myself now?"
+
+"Yaw," declared the fat musician. "You see dot sign?"
+
+He pointed back a few yards. Andy recognized the four-armed semaphore
+set where a narrow road intersected the highway they were traversing.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Andy quickly, "that shows the State line."
+
+"Yaw, dot vas so. No one can arrest you now, Marco says, and Marco vas
+like a lawyer, hey?"
+
+"Will I see Mr. Marco soon again?" asked Andy.
+
+"For sure dot vas. He toldt me vot to do. Vhen we reach dot Cliftons,
+you vill go mit Billy Blow. He vill takes care of you till morning. Den
+you goes to dot Empire Hotel und sees Miss Stella Starr."
+
+"Oh, I understand," exclaimed Andy brightly and hopefully. "And who is
+Billy Blow, please?"
+
+"Him," explained Hans, pointing to the sleeping man with the sad, tired
+face--"dot is Billy Blow, the clown."
+
+"Eh, what--clown? Not the one who rides the donkey and tells such funny
+stories?"
+
+"Oh, yaw," declared the musician in a matter-of-fact way.
+
+Andy was naturally surprised. He could hardly realize that the person he
+was looking at could ever make up as the mirth-provoking genius who was
+the life and fun of the big circus ring.
+
+"Poor Billy!" said Hans, shaking his head solemnly. "First his vife
+falls from a horse. She vas in dot hospitals. Den his little poy,
+Midget, is sick. Poor Billy!"
+
+Andy suddenly remembered something. He craned his neck and looked
+steadfastly along the road.
+
+"I want to leave the wagon when we get a little further along," he said.
+
+"I likes not dot," answered Snitzellbaum. "Maybe you gets in droubles,
+so?"
+
+"No, it's when we reach an old barn," explained Andy. "I left something
+there earlier in the evening. I won't be a minute getting it."
+
+In about half-an-hour, as they approached the hay barn where Andy had
+overheard the conversation between Daley and Murdock, he slipped down
+from the wagon. He ran ahead, went up among the hay bales, found the
+coat containing the marble bag holding his little stock of money, and
+speedily rejoined the musician.
+
+Hans finished his pipe and sank into a doze. Andy could not sleep. He
+had gone through too much excitement that day to readily
+compose himself.
+
+He lay listening dreamily to the jolty clatter of the wagons, the shouts
+of the drivers, and the commotion of the animals in the menagerie cages.
+Meanwhile he was thinking ardently of the next day. It would decide his
+fate. He felt hopeful that the show would take him on from the fact that
+Miss Stella Starr had required his presence the next morning.
+
+"Hey," spoke a sudden voice, "give us a chaw, will you?"
+
+Andy with a start turned to face the boy he had noticed asleep. The
+latter had rudely knocked his shoulder. He had looked mean to Andy while
+slumbering. He looked tough as he fixed his eyes on Andy, wide open.
+
+"I don't 'chaw,'" said the latter.
+
+"Teeth gone?" sneered the other.
+
+"No, that's why I don't care to lose them," retorted Andy.
+
+"Huh! Say, Snitzellbaum, loan me a little tobacco, will you?"
+
+The speaker had nudged the musician. The latter eyed him with little
+favor.
+
+"You vas a kid," he observed, stirring up. "Vhen you grow up, maybe. Not
+now."
+
+The boy let out a string of rough expletives under his breath. Then
+fixing his eye on Andy curiously, he demanded:
+
+"Who's the kindergarten kid? Trying to break into the show?"
+
+"I may," answered Andy calmly.
+
+"Oho!" chuckled the other, with a wicked grin--"we'll have some fun
+with you, then."
+
+"Maybe not," broke in the musician. "Dot poy has a pull."
+
+"Oh, has he?" snorted the other.
+
+"Yaw. Maybe you don't know, hey, Jim Tapp? You hear about dot cut
+trapeze? Aha! It vas dis poy who discovered dot in time."
+
+"Eh!" ejaculated young Tapp, with a prodigious start. "Yes," he
+continued very slowly, viewing Andy with a searching, hateful look. "I
+heard of it. Says Murdock put up the job to break Thacher's neck."
+
+"Dot vas so."
+
+"How does he know it?"
+
+"He overheardt dose schoundrels tell dot."
+
+"Maybe he's lying."
+
+"Did dot cut trapeze show if he vas, hey?"
+
+"Then he's a spy. Sneaking in on gentlemen's private affairs. Bah!"
+cried Tapp, with a venomous stare at Andy, "I wouldn't train with you
+two at a hundred per week!"
+
+He crawled over to the edge of the wagon preparatory to leaving the
+vehicle and seeking more congenial company.
+
+"Hey, you, Jim Tapp," observed Snitzellbaum, "you vas a pal of Daley,
+hey? You see him? Vell, you tell him ve hang him up by dose heels, und
+Murdock mit him, vonce ve catch dem. See you?"
+
+Tapp disappeared over the edge of the wagon into the road.
+
+"Mein friend," remarked the musician to Andy, "you vatch oud for dot
+poy."
+
+Andy Wildwood recalled the solemn warning before the next day was over.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+BILLY BLOW, CLOWN
+
+
+Billy Blow, the clown, woke up just as the wagon reached the tent site
+at Clifton. It was nearly midnight.
+
+His sleep did not seem to have refreshed him much. He got down from the
+vehicle like a man half-awake, and as if the effort hurt him. He had to
+shake himself to get the stiffness out of his limbs.
+
+"Dis vos dot poy I told you aboud, Billy," said the musician.
+
+"Oh, yes, yes," answered the clown in a preoccupied way, with a quick
+look at Andy. "I'll take him under my wing until Marco comes along. This
+way, kid. I've some baggage to look after. Then we'll bunk."
+
+Andy bade Hans Snitzellbaum adieu with reluctance. He liked the
+bluff-hearted old German with his fatherly ways.
+
+"Goot py for dot bresent times," said the fat musician. "Vhen I sees you
+mit dose tumblers, I gives some big bang-bang, boom-boom, hey?"
+
+"I hope you will," responded Andy with a cheery laugh.
+
+He followed Billy Blow. The latter finally found the wagon he was after.
+He bundled its contents about and got a small wooden box and a big
+wicker trunk to one side.
+
+"Wish you'd mind these till I see if I can't make quick sleeping
+quarters," Blow said to Andy.
+
+"Yes, sir, I'll be glad to," answered Andy willingly, and the clown
+hurried off in his usual nervous fashion.
+
+Andy was kept keenly awake for the ensuing hour. It did not seem to be
+night at all. The scene about him was one of constant activity.
+
+Andy caught a glimpse of real circus life. Its details filled him with
+wonderment, admiration and keen interest.
+
+The scene was one of constantly increasing hustle and bustle. There was
+infinite variety and excitement in the occasion. For all that, there was
+a system, precision and progress in all that was done that
+fascinated Andy.
+
+The boy was witnessing the building of a great city in itself within the
+space of half-a-dozen hours.
+
+The caravan wound in, section by section. The wagons moved to set places
+as if doing so automatically, discharged their cumbersome loads,
+and retired.
+
+First came the baggage train, then the stake and chain wagons, the side
+shows, paraphernalia, and the menagerie cages.
+
+The circus area proper had been all marked out, the ring graded,
+sawdust-strewn, and straw scattered to absorb dampness.
+
+The blacksmiths' wagons, cooks' caravan and the minor tents all removed
+to the far rear. The naphtha torches were set every twenty feet apart to
+illuminate proceedings. Workers were hauling on the ground great
+hogsheads of water. Near the dining tents half-a-hundred table cloths
+were already hanging out on wire clothes lines to dry.
+
+Some men were washing small tents with paraffin to season them against
+the weather. Finally the great forty-horse team lumbered up with its
+mighty load. The boss canvasman with half-a-hundred assistants began the
+construction of "the main top," or performing tent, holding fifteen
+thousand people.
+
+Andy, absorbed in every maneuver displayed, was completely lost in the
+deepest interest when a voice at his side aroused him.
+
+"Tired waiting?" asked Billy Blow.
+
+"Oh, no," answered Andy, "I could watch this forever, I think."
+
+"It would soon get stale," declared the clown, with a faint smile. "Give
+us a hand, partner--one at a time, and we'll get my togs and ourselves
+under cover."
+
+Andy took one handle of the box, the clown the other. They carried it to
+the door of one of twenty small tents near the cook's quarters. They
+brought the wicker trunk also, and then carried box and trunk inside
+the tent.
+
+Andy looked about it curiously. A candle burned on a bench. Beyond it
+was a mattress. Near one side, and boxed in by platform sections as if
+to keep off draughts, was a second smaller mattress.
+
+On a stool near it sat a thin-faced, lady-like woman. She was smiling
+down at a little boy lying huddled up in shawls and a comforter.
+
+"This is my boy, Wildwood," spoke Billy Blow. "New hand, Midge--if he
+makes good."
+
+The little fellow nodded in a grave, mature way at Andy. According to
+his size, he resembled a child of four. That was why they called him
+Midget. Andy learned later that he was ten years old. He had an act with
+the circus, going around the ring perched on the shoulders of a
+bare-back rider. He also sometimes had a part with "the Tom Thumb
+acrobats," doing some clever hoop-jumping with a trick Shetland pony.
+
+He seemed to be just recovering from a fit of sickness. His face,
+prematurely old, was pinched and colorless.
+
+"Our Columbine in the Humpty Dumpty afterpiece," was the way the clown
+introduced the lady. "I don't know how to thank you for all your
+trouble, Miss Nellis."
+
+"Don't mention it, Billy," responded the woman. "Any of us would fight
+for it to help you or the kid, wouldn't we, Midge?"
+
+"I don't know why," answered the lad in a weary way. "I ain't much good
+any more."
+
+"Now hear that ungrateful boy!" rallied Miss Nellis. "Billy, the doctor
+says his whole trouble was poisoned canned stuff, bad water and a cold.
+He's broken the fever. Here's some medicine. Every hour a spoonful until
+gone, and doctor says he'll be fit as ever in a day or two."
+
+"That's good," said the clown, a lone tear trickling down his cheek. "I
+wish I could afford the hotel for the lad, instead of this
+rough-and-tumble shack life, but my wife's hospital bills drain me
+pretty well."
+
+"Never mind. Better times coming, Billy. Don't you get disheartened,"
+cheered the little woman. "Remember now, don't miss that medicine."
+
+Miss Nellis went away. Andy heard poor Billy sigh as he adjusted the
+larger mattress.
+
+"There's your bunk," he said to Andy. "Marco will see you early in the
+morning."
+
+Andy took off his coat and shoes and lay down on the rude bed. He
+watched Midget tracing the outlines of a picture with his white finger
+in a book Miss Nellis had brought him.
+
+Andy saw the clown go over to a stool and place a homely, old-fashioned
+watch and a spoon and medicine bottle Miss Nellis had given him upon it.
+
+Then Blow came back to the big mattress and sat down on it. He bent his
+face in his hands in a tired way. Every minute he would sway with
+sleepiness, start up, and try to keep awake.
+
+"The man is half-dead for the want of sleep, worn out with all his
+worries," thought Andy. "Mr. Blow," he said aloud, sitting up, "I can't
+sleep a wink. This is all so new to me. I'll just disturb you rustling
+about here. Please let me attend to the little fellow, won't you, and
+you take a good sound snooze? Come, it will do you lots of good."
+
+"No, no," began the clown weakly.
+
+"Please," persisted Andy. "Honest, I can't close my eyes. Now don't you
+have a care. I'll give Midget his medicine to the second."
+
+Andy felt a glow of real pleasure and satisfaction as the clown lay
+down. He was asleep in two minutes. Andy went over to the stool.
+
+"I'm going to be your nurse," he told Midget. "Suppose you sleep, too."
+
+"I can't," answered the little fellow. "I've been asleep all day. Wish I
+had another book, I've looked this one through a hundred times."
+
+"I could tell you some stories," Andy suggested. "Good ones."
+
+"Will you, say, will you?" pleaded the clown's boy eagerly.
+
+"You bet--and famous ones."
+
+Andy kept his promise. He ransacked his mind for the brightest stories
+he had ever read. Never was there a more interested listener. Andy
+talked in a low voice so as not to disturb the clown.
+
+Midget seemed most to like the real stories of his own village life that
+Andy finally drifted into.
+
+"That's what I'd like," he said, after Andy had told of some boyish
+adventures back at Fairview.
+
+"Oh, I'm so tired of moving on--all the time moving on!"
+
+"Strange," thought Andy, "and that's just the kind of a life I'm trying
+to get into."
+
+Midget became so animated that Andy finally got him to tell some stories
+about circus life. All that, however, was "shop talk" to the little
+performer, but Andy learned considerable from the keen-witted little
+fellow, who appeared to know as much about the ins and outs of show life
+as some veteran of the ring.
+
+He enlightened his auditor greatly in the line of real circus slang.
+Andy learned that in show vernacular clowns were "joys," and other
+performers "kinkers." A pocket book was a "leather," a hat a "lid," a
+ticket a "fake," an elephant a "bull." Lemonade was "juice," eyes were
+"lamps," candy peddlers were "butchers," and the various tents "tops,"
+as, for instance: "main top," "cook top," and the side shows were
+"kid tops."
+
+Finally little Midge went to sleep. Andy woke him up each hour till
+daybreak to take his medicine. After the last dose Andy went outside to
+stretch his limbs and get a mouthful of fresh air.
+
+He saw men still tirelessly working here and there. Some were housing
+the live stock, some unpacking seat stands, some fixing the banners on
+the main tent.
+
+Andy did not go far from the clown's tent. It was fairly dawn. Happening
+to glance towards the chandelier wagon he came to a dead stand-still,
+and stared.
+
+"Hello!" said Andy with animation. "There's that Jim Tapp, and the man
+with him--yes, it's the fellow, Murdock, I saw with Daley in the old
+hay barn."
+
+As he stood gazing Tapp caught sight of him. He started violently and
+spoke some quick words to his companion, pointing towards Andy.
+
+"That's the man who cut the trapeze," murmured Andy. "I'll rouse the
+clown and tell him. He's a dangerous man to have lurking around."
+
+"Hey! hey!" called out Tapp at just that moment.
+
+Both he and his companion started running towards Andy. There was that
+in their bearing that warned Andy they meant him no good. Andy did
+not pause.
+
+"Stop, I tell you!" shouted the man, Murdock.
+
+Andy made a bee-line for the clown's tent. As he neared it he glanced
+back over his shoulder.
+
+Tapp was still putting after him. His companion had stooped to pick up
+an iron tent stake from the ground.
+
+This he let drive with full force. It took Andy squarely between the
+shoulders, and he dropped like a shot.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+ANDY JOINS THE SHOW
+
+
+The breath seemed clear knocked out of Andy's body. The shock of the
+blow from the stake deprived him of consciousness.
+
+Andy opened his eyes in about two minutes. He found himself lying on the
+ground, half-a-dozen circus employees gathered around him.
+
+"Help me up," said Andy in a confused way. "I mustn't miss giving Midge
+his medicine."
+
+"Eh--the clown's boy?" spoke one of the men sharply.
+
+"Oh," said Andy, regaining his senses more completely, "have I been here
+long?"
+
+"About two minutes."
+
+"Then Midge is all right--oh, dear!"
+
+Andy, trying to arise, gasped and tottered weakly. The man who had
+addressed him seemed to be a sort of boss of the others. He held Andy
+firmly as he said:
+
+"Belong with Billy Blow? All right, we'll take you to his tent. But,
+say--what did those fellows knock you out for?"
+
+"Did you see the fellows?" inquired Andy.
+
+"I was way over near the big bunk top. I heard some one holler, saw you
+running. Two fellows were after you. One let drive that stake. It took
+you between the shoulders like a cannon ball. An ugly throw, and a
+wicked one. Wonder it didn't fetch you for good."
+
+"One of the fellows was a boy named Jim Tapp," said Andy.
+
+"That rascal, eh?" spoke the man. "Thought he'd quit us. Was going to.
+Borrowed all he could, and salary tied up on an attachment."
+
+"The other was a man named Murdock. He's the fellow who cut the trapeze
+on Benares Brothers last night."
+
+"What!" cried the man, with a jump. "Hey, men--you hear that? Go for
+both! Get them! They're wanted for these crooked jobs."
+
+Those addressed started on a chase, pursuant to directions of their
+leader who had seen Murdock and Tapp run away as he came up to the
+prostrate Andy.
+
+The man himself helped Andy to the clown's tent. Their entrance aroused
+Billy Blow, who sprang up quickly as he noticed that Andy walked in a
+pained, disabled fashion. He was quite another man for his long,
+refreshing sleep.
+
+"Why, what's the matter?" he asked.
+
+Andy's companion explained. The clown expressed his sympathy and
+indignation in the same breath. He urged that the show detectives be
+aroused at once.
+
+"I heard Harding say last night he'd spend a thousand dollars, but he'd
+get Daley and Murdock behind the bars for attempted murder," declared
+the clown.
+
+The man who had assisted Andy went away saying he would consult with Mr.
+Giles Harding, the owner of the circus, at once.
+
+"You see, Murdock ventured here to find out how his wicked plot
+succeeded, never suspecting that he was found out," theorized the clown.
+"That fellow, Tapp, was always his crony. They're a bad lot, you can
+guess that from the stake they threw at you. No bones broken? Good!
+Hurts? I'll soon fix that. Strip, now."
+
+"All right."
+
+The clown had felt all over Andy's back as the latter sat down on the
+bench. Now he made Andy take off his coat and shirt. Then he produced a
+big bottle from his wicker trunk.
+
+"Ever hear of the Nine Oils?" he asked, as he poured a lot of black,
+greasy stuff out of the bottle into the palm of his hand.
+
+"No," said Andy.
+
+"This is it," explained the clown, beginning to rub Andy's back
+vigorously. "You've got quite a bruise, and I suppose it pains. Just lay
+down. When I get through, if the Nine Oils don't fix you up, I'll give
+you nine dollars."
+
+The clown rubbed Andy good and hard. Then he made him lie down on the
+big mattress. The Nine Oils had a magical effect. Andy's pain and
+soreness were soon soothed. He fell into a doze, and woke up to observe
+that Marco was in the tent conversing with the clown.
+
+"Hi, Wildwood," hailed Andy's friend. "Having quite a time of it, aren't
+you?"
+
+Andy got up as good as ever. His back smarted slightly--that was the
+only reminder he had of Murdock's savage assault.
+
+Billy Blow had been telling Marco about Andy's latest mishap. Marco was
+greatly worked up over it. He said the attempted trick on old Benares's
+partner had become noised about, and if the two plotters were arrested
+and brought anywhere near the circus, they stood a good show
+of lynching.
+
+"I'll step down with you to the hotel about ten o'clock, Wildwood," said
+Marco. "Miss Starr has some word for you."
+
+Andy simply said "Thank you," but his hopes rose tremendously. He
+accompanied Marco to the big eating tent and at the man's invitation had
+breakfast. The food was good and everything was scrupulously clean.
+
+Marco got a big tin tray, and he and Andy carried a double breakfast to
+Billy Blow's tent.
+
+The clown had got rested up and was bright and chipper, for little Midge
+seemed on the mend, and was as lively as a cricket. The little fellow
+ate a hearty meal, and then expressed a wish for an airing. Marco
+borrowed one of the wagons used by some performing goats, and Andy rode
+Midge around the grounds for half-an-hour.
+
+At about eight o'clock Andy went to the principal street of the town. He
+bought himself a new shirt and a cap. Going back to the clown's tent he
+washed up, and made himself generally tidy and presentable for the
+coming interview at the Empire Hotel.
+
+Andy had a full hour to spare before the time set for that event
+arrived. He took a stroll about the circus grounds, meeting jolly old
+Hans Snitzellbaum, and Benares and his partner, Thacher.
+
+His part taken in the impromptu arenic performance of the evening
+previous had become generally known. Andy was pointed out to the
+watchmen and others, and no one hindered him going about as he chose.
+
+Andy viewed another phase of show detail now. It was the picturesque
+part, the family side of circus daily life.
+
+He saw women busy at fancy work or sewing, their children playing with
+the ring ponies or petting the cake-walking horse.
+
+Some of the men were mending their clothes, others were washing out
+collars and handkerchiefs. What element of home life there was in the
+circus experience Andy witnessed in his brief stroll.
+
+He was on time to the minute at the Empire Hotel. A bell-boy showed him
+up to the ladies' parlor on the second floor.
+
+Miss Stella Starr was listening to some members of the circus minstrel
+show trying over some new airs on the piano.
+
+The moment she saw him she came forward with hand extended and a welcome
+smile on her kindly face.
+
+She made Andy feel at home at once. She insisted on hearing all the
+details of his experience since the evening he had saved her from
+disaster during the wind storm.
+
+"I think now just as I thought night before last, Andy," she said
+finally. "You do not owe much of duty to that aunt of yours. I think I
+would fight pretty hard to get away, in your place, with the reform
+school staring me in the face. Well, Andy, I have spoken to
+Mr. Harding."
+
+"Can--can I join?" asked Andy, with a good deal of anxiety.
+
+"Yes, Andy. I had a long talk with him about you, and--here he is now."
+
+A brisk-moving, keen-faced man of about fifty entered the parlor just
+then.
+
+"Mr. Harding, this is the boy, Andy Wildwood, I told you about," said
+Miss Starr.
+
+"Oh, indeed?" observed the showman, looking Andy all over with one
+swift, comprehensive glance. "They tell me you can do stunts,
+young man?"
+
+"Oh, a little--on the bar and tumbling," said Andy.
+
+"Well, I suppose you don't expect to star it for awhile," said Harding.
+"You must begin at the bottom, you know."
+
+"I want to, sir."
+
+"Very good. I will give you a card to the manager. He will make you
+useful in a general way until we have our two days' rest at Tipton, I'll
+look you up then, and see if you've got any ring stuff in you."
+
+Andy took the card tendered by the showman after the latter had written
+a few words on it in pencil.
+
+Andy made his best bow to Miss Starr. He was delighted and fluttered. He
+showed it so much that the showman was pleased out of the common.
+
+"Come back a minute," he called out. "My boy," he continued, placing a
+friendly hand on Andy's shoulder, "you have made a good start with us in
+that Benares matter. Keep on the right side always, and you will
+succeed. Never swear, quarrel or gamble. Assist our patrons, and be
+civil and obliging on all occasions. The circus is a grand centre of
+fraternal good will, properly managed, and the right circus stands for
+health, happiness, virtue and vigor. Its motto should be courage,
+ambition and energy, governed by honest purpose and tempered by
+humanity. I don't want to lecture, but I am giving you the benefit of
+what has cost me twenty years experience and a good many thousands
+of dollars."
+
+"Thank you, sir, I shall not forget what you have told me," said Andy.
+
+For all that, Andy's mind was for the present full only of the pomp and
+glitter of his new calling. One supreme thought made his heart bubble
+over with joy:
+
+At last he had reached the goal of his fondest wishes. Andy Wildwood had
+"joined the circus."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE REGISTERED MAIL
+
+
+Andy hurried back to the circus grounds the happiest boy on earth. He
+went straight to the clown's tent.
+
+Billy Blow was making up for the morning parade. Dressed up as a
+way-back farmer, he was to drive a hay wagon, breaking into the
+procession here and there along the line of march. Finally, when he had
+created a sensation, he was to drop his disguise and emerge in his usual
+popular ring character.
+
+While Billy was putting the finishing touches to his toilet he conversed
+with Andy, congratulating him on his success in getting a job with
+the show.
+
+"Wait about half-an-hour till the parade gets off the grounds," he
+advised Andy. "Scripps, the manager, will be busy till then. You'll find
+him in the paper tent."
+
+Andy knew what that was--the structure containing the programmes and
+general advertising and posting outfits of the show. He had noticed it
+earlier in the day. A wagon inside the tent, with steps and windows,
+comprised the manager's private office.
+
+Little Midge was sitting up playing with some show children who had
+brought in a lot of toys. Andy went outside with Billy.
+
+"See here," said the clown, as he hurried off to join the parade. "Tell
+Scripps that you bunk with me. Any objection?"
+
+"I should say not."
+
+"You're welcome. The general crowd they'd put you with is a bit too
+rough for a raw recruit. Just stand what they give you till we reach
+Tipton. You've got friends enough to pull you up into the performers'
+rank. We'll fix you out there."
+
+"Thank you," said Andy.
+
+He strolled about with a happy smile on his face. Prospects looked fine,
+and Andy's heart warmed as he thought of all the good friends he
+had made.
+
+"They're a nice crowd," he thought--"Miss Starr, Marco, the Benares
+Brothers, the clown. How different, though, to what I used to think!
+It's business with them, real work, for all the tinsel and glare. It's a
+pleasant business, though, and they must make a lot of money."
+
+There was a shrill, whistling shriek from the calliope wagon. The
+various performers scampered from their dressing rooms at the signal.
+
+Each person, vehicle and animal fell into line in the morning caravan
+with a promptness and ease born of long practice.
+
+Soon there was a fluttering line of gay color, rich plush hangings,
+bullion-trimmed uniforms, silken flags and streamers.
+
+Zeno, the balloon clown, eating "redhots," i.e. peanuts, led the
+procession, bouncing up and down on a rubber globe in the advance
+chariot. The bands began to play. The prancing horses, rumbling wagons,
+screaming calliope, frolicking tumblers, tramp bicyclists weaving in and
+out in grotesque costumes, often on one wheel, the Tallyho stage filled
+with smiling ladies, old Sultan, the majestic lion, gazing in calm
+dignity down from his high extension cage--all this passed, a fantastic
+panorama, before Andy's engrossed gaze.
+
+"It's grand!" decided Andy--"just grand! A fellow can never get lonesome
+here, night or day. I'm going to like it. Now for the manager. Hope I
+don't have any trouble."
+
+When Andy came to the paper tent he found a good many people inside.
+There were several performers and canvas men on crutches or bandaged up.
+There were village merchants with bills, newspaper men after free passes
+and persons seeking employment.
+
+They were called in turn up the steps of the wagon that constituted the
+manager's office.
+
+Mr. Scripps was a rapid talker, a brisk man of business, and he disposed
+of the cases presented in quick order.
+
+Andy saw four or five dissipated looking men discharged at a word. The
+applicants for work were ordered to appear at Tipton, two days later.
+
+Several were after an advance on their salary. Some farmers appeared
+with claims for foraging done by circus hands. Finally Andy got to the
+front and tendered the card Mr. Harding had given him.
+
+"All right," shot out Scripps sharply, giving the lad a keen look.
+"You're the one who blocked the game on Benares? Good for you! We'll
+remember that, later."
+
+Scripps glanced over a pasteboard sheet on his desk, first asking Andy
+his name and age, and writing his answers down in a big-paged book.
+
+"Half-a-dollar a day and keep, for the present," he said.
+
+"All right," nodded Andy--"it's a start."
+
+"Just so. Let me see. Ah, here we are. Report to the Wild Man of Borneo
+side top at twelve."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Hammer the big triangle there till two. Then--let me see again. Know
+how to ride a horse?"
+
+"Oh, yes," replied Andy eagerly.
+
+"All right, at two o'clock report for the jockey ring section at the
+horse tent. They'll hand you a costume."
+
+Scripps wrote a number on a red ticket and handed this to Andy--his pass
+as an employee. Just then a newcomer bundled up the steps
+unceremoniously, a red-faced, fussy old fellow.
+
+"Mail's in," he announced. "Give me the O.K."
+
+Scripps fumbled in a drawer of his desk and brought out a rubber stamp
+and pad.
+
+"Mind your eye, Rip," he observed, casting a scrutinizing look over the
+intruder.
+
+"Which eye?" demanded the old fellow.
+
+"The one that sees a bottle and glass the quickest."
+
+"H'm!" grumbled Ripley, or "Rip Van Winkle," as he was familiarly known
+by the show people. "My eyes are all right. Don't fret. I've been twenty
+years with this here show, man and boy--"
+
+"Yes, yes, we know all about that," interrupted Scripps. "You're
+seasoned, right enough. Don't leave the rig to come home without a
+driver, though, and money letters aboard, as you did last week. Here is
+a new hand. Break him in to keep his time employed."
+
+Ripley viewed Andy with some disfavor. Evidently he regarded him as a
+sort of guardian.
+
+Andy, however, silently followed him outside. Ripley soon reached a
+close vehicle, boarded up back of the seat and with two doors at
+the rear.
+
+A big-boned mottled horse, once evidently a beauty, was between the
+shafts. As Andy lifted himself to the seat beside Ripley, the latter
+made a peculiar, purring: "Z-rr-rp, Lute!"
+
+He did not even take up the reins. The horse, with a neigh and a frisky
+dance movement of the forefeet, started up.
+
+"Right, left, slow, Lute. Turn--now go"--Ripley gave a dozen directions
+within the next five minutes. He was showing off for Andy's benefit. The
+latter was, in fact, pleased. The animal obeyed every direction with a
+precision and intelligence that fairly amazed the boy.
+
+Finally getting to a clear course outside the circus tangle, Ripley took
+up the reins.
+
+He set his lips and uttered two sharp whistles, ending in a kind of
+hiss.
+
+Andy was very nearly jerked out of his seat He had to hold on to its
+side bar. For about five hundred yards the horse took a sprint that
+knocked off his cap and fairly took his breath away.
+
+"Say, he's great!" Andy exclaimed irrepressibly, as Ripley slowed down
+again.
+
+"I guess so," nodded the latter, aroused out of his crustiness by Andy's
+enthusiasm. "That Lucille was famous, once. Past her prime a little now,
+but when her old driver has the reins, she don't forget, does she?"
+
+Ripley took a turn into a side street and finally halted, giving Andy
+the reins.
+
+"Got to order something," he said.
+
+Andy saw him enter a store, but only to leave it by a side door and
+cross an alley into a saloon.
+
+Ripley tried to appear very business-like when he came back to the
+wagon, but Andy caught the taint of liquor in his breath.
+
+Twice again the circus veteran made stops in the same manner. He became
+quite chatty and confidential.
+
+Ripley explained to Andy that he went regularly for the circus mail at
+each town where the show stopped.
+
+"Postmasters kick, with five hundred strangers calling for their mail,"
+he explained, "so we always forward a list of the employees. This mail,
+just before pay day, when the crowd is usually hard up, brings a good
+many money letters from friends. That rubber stamp you saw the manager
+give me O.K.'s all the registered cards at the post office. Once the
+wagon was robbed. The looters made quite a haul. Not when I was on
+duty, though."
+
+At a drug store Ripley got several packages and some more at a general
+merchandise store. Finally they reached the post office, and Ripley
+drove around to a sort of hitching alley at its side.
+
+"Come with me to see how we do things," he invited Andy. "Bring along
+those two mail bags."
+
+Andy had already noticed the bags. One was quite large. It was made of
+canvas, with a snap lock. The other was of leather, and smaller in size.
+
+Swinging these over his shoulder, Ripley entered the post-office. He
+showed his credentials from the circus, and was admitted behind the
+letter cases of the places.
+
+Andy watched him receive over a hundred letters and packages, receipting
+for the same on registry delivery cards. This lot he placed in the small
+leather bag.
+
+The ordinary mail lay sorted out for the circus on a stamping table.
+This went into the big canvas pouch.
+
+The circus newspaper mail was ready tagged in a hempen sack. Ripley
+carried this out to Andy.
+
+"Toss it in the wagon," he ordered, following with the letter pouches.
+
+Andy opened the back doors of the wagon and tossed in the newspaper bag.
+
+"Say, back in a minute," observed Ripley, depositing his own burdens on
+the front wagon seat.
+
+Andy stood watching him. Ripley rounded a corner in the alley where a
+wooden finger indicated a side entrance to a hotel bar. Ripley's failing
+was manifest, and Andy decided that he did, indeed, need a guardian.
+
+The wagon stood on a space quite secluded from the street. Near the
+entrance to the alley several men were lounging about.
+
+Andy carried the leather pouch with him as he went around to the open
+doors at the rear of the wagon.
+
+He climbed in, and stowed the newspaper bag and what packages they had
+already collected in a tidy pile. Ripley had indicated that there was
+quite a miscellaneous load to pick up about town before they returned to
+the circus.
+
+Andy was thus employed when the rear doors came together with a sharp
+snap.
+
+They shut him in a close prisoner, for they were self-locking, on the
+outside only.
+
+Andy, in complete darkness, now groped back to the doors. He heard
+quick, suppressed tones outside.
+
+The vehicle jolted. Some one had jumped to the front seat. A whip
+snapped. Old Lute started up with a bound, throwing Andy off his
+footing. "Send her spinning!" reached him in a muffled voice from the
+front seat.
+
+"Jump with the bag when we turn that old shed," answered other tones.
+"Why, say! There's only one mail bag."
+
+"I saw them bring out two. I am dead sure of it."
+
+"And this is only common letters."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Jim Tapp described them--'get the leather one,' he says. 'It's got the
+money mail in it.'"
+
+"Then where is it?"
+
+"The kid must have it."
+
+"Inside the wagon?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Whoa."
+
+With a sharp jerk the horse was pulled to a halt.
+
+Andy heard the two men on the seat jump to the ground. He knew that
+their motive was robbery. He knew further that this was another plot of
+bad Jim Tapp, the friend and associate of criminals.
+
+In another minute the men would open the wagon doors, pull him out,
+perhaps assault him, take the registered mail and fly.
+
+Andy had only a second to act in. He theorized that the wagon, following
+the alley, was now probably halted in some secluded side lane.
+
+To escape the clutches of the would-be robbers was everything. Andy,
+having no weapon of defence, was no match for them.
+
+"If the rig once reaches the crowded streets, I'm safe," thought Andy.
+
+Then he carried out a speedy programme. Forming his lips in a pucker, as
+he had seen Ripley do, Andy uttered two sharp whistles, then a clear,
+resounding hiss.
+
+"Thunder!" yelled a voice outside.
+
+"Ouch!" echoed a second.
+
+The horse had given one wild, prodigious bound at hearing the familiar
+signal.
+
+The vehicle must have grazed one of the thieves. Its front wheels
+knocked the other down.
+
+"My! I'm in for it," instantly decided Andy.
+
+For, swayed from side to side, he realized that the circus wagon was
+dashing forward at runaway speed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+A WILD JOURNEY
+
+
+Andy Wildwood found himself in a box, in more ways than one.
+
+Judging from the sounds he had heard, the men bent on securing the
+registered mail pouch had been baffled. The old circus horse had started
+on a sudden and surprisingly swift sprint. From the feeling of turns,
+jerks and swings, Andy decided that within four minutes the rig had left
+the post-office fully half-a-mile to the rear.
+
+"I've started the horse all right," said Andy. "Old Ripley's signal has
+acted like a charm. How to stop the animal, though. That is the present
+question?"
+
+Andy ran at the two rear doors of the wagon. He steadied himself, arms
+extended so as to touch either side of the box. Then he gave the doors a
+tremendous kick with the sole of his shoe.
+
+The doors did not budge. He felt over their inner surfaces where they
+came together. The lock was set in the wood. They could be opened only
+from the outside.
+
+The wagon box had one aperture, Andy discovered. This was a small
+ventilating grating up in one corner above the seat.
+
+He sprang up on the newspaper bag. This brought his eyes on a level with
+the grating. It was about four by six inches, with slanting slats. Andy
+could see down at the horse and ahead along the road.
+
+He grew excited and somewhat uneasy as he looked out. Lute was a sight
+for a race track. Her head down, mane flowing, tail extended, she was
+covering the ground with tremendous strides.
+
+Farther back on the route Andy had felt the wagon collide with curbs and
+with other vehicles. Once there was a crash and a yell, and he felt sure
+they had taken a wheel off a rig they passed. Now, however, they
+appeared to be quite clear of the town proper.
+
+The road ahead was a slanting one. A steep grade fully half-a-mile long
+led to a stone bridge crossing a river. It was so steep that Andy
+wondered that Lute did not stumble. The wagon wheels ground and slid so
+that the vehicle lifted at the rear, as if its own momentum would cause
+a sudden tip-over.
+
+"We'll never reach the bottom of the hill," decided Andy. "My! we're
+going!"
+
+He shouted out words of direction to the horse he had heard Ripley
+employ. Lute did not hear, at least did not heed. Andy remembered now
+that in stopping the horse Ripley had used the reins.
+
+He held his breath as, striking a rut, the wagon bounded up in the air.
+He clung for dear life, with one hand clutching the ventilator bars as
+the vehicle was flung sideways over ten feet, threatening to snap off
+the wheels, which bent and cracked on their axles at the
+terrific strain.
+
+Contrary to Andy's anticipations they neared the bottom of the hill
+without a mishap. Suddenly, however, he gave a shout. A new danger
+threatened.
+
+The bridge had large stone posts where it began. Then a frail wooden
+railing was its only side protection. The roadway was not very broad.
+Two full loads of hay could never have passed one another on
+that bridge.
+
+"There's a team coming," breathed Andy. "We'll collide, sure. Whoa!
+whoa!" he yelled through the grating. "No use. It's a smash, and a
+bad one."
+
+Andy fixed a distressed glance on the team half-way across the bridge. A
+collision was inevitable. Lute, striking the level, only increased her
+already terrific rate of speed.
+
+Andy took heart, however, as she swerved to one side.
+
+The intelligent animal appeared to enjoy her wild runaway, and wanted to
+keep it up. Apparently she aimed to keep precisely to her own side of
+the road and avoid a collision.
+
+The driver of the team coming had jumped from his seat and pulled his
+rig to the very edge of the planking. All might have gone well but for a
+slight miscalculation.
+
+As Lute's feet struck the bridge plankway, she pressed close to the
+right. The wagon swerved. The front end of the box landed squarely
+against the stone post.
+
+The shock was a stunning one. It tore the wagon shafts, harness and all,
+clear off the horse. With a circling twist the vehicle reversed like
+lightning. The box struck the wooden rail. This snapped like a
+pipe stem.
+
+Lute, dashed on like a whirlwind, the driver of the other team staring
+in appalled wonder, the box slid clear of the plankway and went whirling
+to the river bed fifteen feet below.
+
+Andy was thrown from side to side. Then, as the wagon landed, a new
+crash and a new shock dazed his wits completely. He was hurled the
+length of the box, his head fortunately striking where the newspaper bag
+intervened.
+
+Judging from the concussion, Andy decided that the wagon box had landed
+on a big rock in the river bed. There it remained stationary. He
+struggled to an upright position. One arm was badly wrenched. His face
+was grazed and bleeding.
+
+"If I don't get out some way," he panted, "I'll drown."
+
+It looked that way. He felt a great spurt of water, pouring in rapidly
+when the ventilator dipped under the surface. Then, too, the crash had
+wrenched the box structure at various seams. Water was forcing its way
+in, bottom, sides and top.
+
+From ankle-deep to knee-deep, Andy stood helpless. Then, locating the
+door end of the vehicle, he drew back and massed all his muscle for a
+supreme effort. Shoulders first Andy posed, and then threw himself
+forward, battering-ram fashion. He felt he must act and that quickly, or
+else the worst might be his own.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+A FREAK OF NATURE
+
+
+The doors at the rear of the wagon box gave way as Andy's body met their
+inner surface with full force. He stood now on a slant, his body
+submerged to the waist.
+
+The box had crashed on top of one big flat rock in the river bed, and
+had tilted on this foundation against another upright rock. But for this
+it might have gone clear under water or floated down stream, and Andy
+might have been drowned.
+
+All through his stirring runaway experience Andy had kept possession of
+the registered mail pouch. It was still slung from his shoulder as he
+gazed around him. He was careful lest he disturb the equilibrium of the
+wreck. He found out now that the door hinges had been knocked clear off
+and the frame badly wrenched in its fall.
+
+"Hello! hello!" shouted an excited voice overhead.
+
+"Hello yourself," sang back Andy, looking up.
+
+The driver of the team into which the runaway had so nearly dashed stood
+looking down from the bridge planking. His eyes stared wide as Andy
+suddenly appeared like a jack-in-the-box.
+
+"Was you in there?" gulped the man.
+
+"I was nowhere else," answered Andy. "Say, mister, where's that horse?"
+
+"Oh, he's all right. See him?"
+
+The man pointed along the other shore of the river bank. Lute had
+crossed the bridge. She had now taken herself to some marshy grass
+stretches, and was grazing placidly.
+
+Andy was about twenty feet from the shore. He could nearly make it by
+jumping from rock to rock, he thought. At one or two places, however,
+the current ran strong and deep, and he saw that he might have to do
+some swimming.
+
+"See here," he called up to the man on the bridge, "have you got a rope?"
+
+"Yes," nodded the man.
+
+"Long enough to reach down here?"
+
+"I guess so. Let's try. Wait a minute."
+
+He went to his wagon. Shortly he dropped a new stout rope used in
+securing hay loads. It had length and to spare.
+
+Andy tied the mail pouch to its end. Then he groped under water in the
+wagon box. He managed to fish out the various parcels it held, including
+the newspaper bag.
+
+These he sent up first. Then the man at the other end braced the cable
+against a railing post. Andy came up the rope with agility.
+
+He stamped and shook the water from his soaked shoes and clothing. The
+mail bag he again suspended across his shoulders.
+
+"Hi, another runaway!" suddenly exclaimed his companion.
+
+Andy traced an increasing clatter of a horse's hoofs and wagon wheels to
+a rig descending the hill at breakneck speed.
+
+"No," he said. "It's Ripley."
+
+"Who's he?"
+
+"The man who drove that wagon. Stop! stop!" cried Andy, springing into
+the middle of the bridge roadway and waving his arms.
+
+The rig came up. It was driven by a man wearing a badge. Andy decided he
+was some local police officer. Ripley was fearfully excited and his face
+showed it.
+
+"What did you do with that wagon?" sputtered Ripley, jumping to the
+plankway.
+
+Andy pointed down at the river bed and then at the distant horse.
+Briefly as he could he narrated what had occurred.
+
+Ripley nearly had a fit. He instantly realized that whoever was to blame
+for the runaway, it was not Andy.
+
+"Where's the mail?" he asked.
+
+"There's the newspaper bag," said Andy; "here's the registered mail
+pouch. Those thieves took the other bag of mail."
+
+"They did? Do you hear, officer? Get after them quick, won't you? Never
+mind us. Describe them, kid."
+
+"How can I, when I never saw them?" said Andy.
+
+Ripley groaned and wrung his hands. He was in a frenzy of distress and
+indecision.
+
+"See here," spoke the officer to him. "You had better go after that
+horse. Your wagon isn't worth fishing up. Got all there was in it, lad?"
+
+"Yes, sir," answered Andy.
+
+"Very well, bundle that bag and those packages in here, and come with
+me. It's good you held on to that registered stuff."
+
+Ripley started after the runaway horse. The officer hurried townwards,
+questioning Andy closely. He stopped at the post-office and made some
+inquiries among the crowd loitering about its vicinity. Then he drove to
+the town hall, went into his office, jumped in the buggy again, and they
+proceeded toward the circus.
+
+"I've got a vague description of your two men," he told Andy, "but that
+isn't much, with so many strangers in town. You think they are partners
+of that Rapp, whom the circus people know?"
+
+"Tapp--Jim Tapp," corrected Andy. "Yes, they mentioned his name."
+
+"The circus detectives ought to handle this case, then," said the
+village officer. "I'd better see them right away."
+
+The manager of the show regarded Andy in some wonderment as he and the
+officer unceremoniously entered his presence. His excitement increased
+as Andy recited his story.
+
+"I warned Ripley," he exclaimed. "Well, he shan't play the spoiled pet
+any longer. As to you, Wildwood, you deserve credit for your pluck. I'll
+have a talk with you when we get to Tipton. Too shaken up to do a little
+general utility work, till I can arrange for something better?"
+
+"Not at all, sir," answered Andy promptly.
+
+Andy saw that he had made a good impression on the manager. The latter
+was pleased with him and interested in him. Andy waited outside the
+tent. Soon the village officer and two of the circus detectives sought
+him out. These latter questioned him on their own behalf.
+
+"Daley, Murdock and Tapp are in this," one of them remarked definitely.
+"They haven't got much, this time. The next break, though, may be for
+the ticket wagon. They've got to be squelched."
+
+Andy put in a busy, pleasant day. He was getting acquainted, he was
+becoming versed in general circus detail.
+
+For an hour he hammered the huge triangle in front of a side show, as
+directed. At the afternoon rehearsal he was one of twenty dressed like
+jockeys in the ring parade.
+
+Afterwards Andy was making for the clown's tent, when a fat, red-faced,
+perspiring fellow, aproned as a cook, hailed him.
+
+"Belong to show?" he asked, waving a frying pan.
+
+"Sure, I do," answered Andy, proudly.
+
+"Help me a little, will you?"
+
+"Glad to. What can I do?"
+
+"Open these lard and butter casks and carry them in. I haven't time.
+There's a hatchet. My stuff is all burning up inside."
+
+A hissing splutter of his ovens made the cook dive into his tent. Andy
+picked up a chisel dropped by the cook. He opened six casks standing on
+the ground and carried them inside.
+
+The cooking odor pervading the place was very pleasing. The cook's
+assistants were few, some of the regulars were absent, Andy guessed from
+what he heard the cook say. The latter was rushed to death, and jumping
+from stove to stove and utensil to utensil in a great flutter of
+excitement and haste for he was behind in his work.
+
+Andy caught on to the situation. In a swift, quiet way he anticipated
+the cook's needs. He dipped and dried some skillets near a trough of
+water. He sharpened some knives. He carried some charcoal hods nearer to
+a stove needing replenishing.
+
+After awhile the cook began to whistle cheerily. His perplexities were
+lessening, and he felt good humored over it.
+
+"Things in running order," he chirped. "You're a game lad. Hold on a
+minute."
+
+The cook emptied out a smoking pan into which he had placed a mass of
+batter a few minutes previous.
+
+"Don't burn yourself--it's piping hot," he observed, tendering Andy a
+tempting raisin cake, enough for two meals.
+
+"Oh, thank you," said Andy.
+
+"Thank you, lad. Whenever you need a bite between meals, just drop in."
+
+Andy came out of the tent passing the cake from hand to hand. He caught
+a newspaper sheet fluttering by, wadded it up, and surmounted it with
+the hot cake.
+
+"That's better," he said. "My, it looks appetizing. Beg pardon," added
+Andy, as rounding a tent he ran against a boy about his own age.
+
+At a glance he saw that the stranger did not belong to the show. He was
+poorly dressed, but clean-faced and bright-eyed, although he limped like
+a person who had walked too far and too long for comfort.
+
+"My fault," said the stranger. "I've done nothing but gape since I came
+here. Say, this circus is a regular city in itself, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes," answered Andy. "Stranger here?"
+
+The boy nodded. He studied Andy's face quite anxiously.
+
+"Look here," he said, "you look honest. Some lemonade boys I asked sent
+me astray with all kinds of wrong information. You won't, will you?"
+
+"Certainly not," said Andy. "What's the trouble?"
+
+"Is it hard to get a talk with the circus manager?"
+
+"Why, no."
+
+"Is it hard to join the show?"
+
+"I have just joined," said Andy.
+
+"Is that so?" exclaimed the stranger, brightening up. "Was it hard to
+get in?"
+
+"Not particularly. What did you expect to do?"
+
+"Anything for a start," responded the other eagerly. "Only, my ambition
+is to be an animal trainer."
+
+Andy became quite interested.
+
+"Why that?" he inquired.
+
+"Because it seems to be my bent. My name is Luke Belding. I'm an orphan.
+Been brought up on a stock farm, and know all about horses. And say,"
+added the speaker with intense eagerness, "if they'll take me on I'll
+throw in a great curiosity."
+
+He held out what looked like a wooden cage covered with a piece of
+water-proof cloth.
+
+"Got it in there, have you?" asked Andy.
+
+"Yes. I've trained it, and it's cute. Honest, it's better as a
+curiosity, and to make people laugh, than a lot of the novelties they
+have in the side, tents."
+
+"Why," said Andy, with increasing interest, "what may it be, now?"
+
+"Well," answered Luke, "it's a chicken."
+
+"Oh. Two-headed, three-legged, I suppose, or something of that sort?"
+
+"Not at all. No," said Luke Belding, "this is something you never saw
+before. It's a chicken that walks backward."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+CALLED TO ACCOUNT
+
+
+Andy burst out laughing,--he could not help it.
+
+"That's strange," he said. "A chicken that walks backward?"
+
+"Yes," answered Luke Belding, soberly.
+
+"Really does it?"
+
+"Oh, sure. All the time. I've got it here. I'll show you."
+
+Luke made a move as if to remove the cloth cover from the box under his
+arm, but Andy stopped him.
+
+"Hold on," he said. "Come with me till I get rid of this cake, and then
+you shall show me."
+
+"H'm!" observed Luke, smacking his lips with a longing look at the cake,
+"it wouldn't take me long to get rid of it!"
+
+"Hungry?" insinuated Andy.
+
+"Desperately. I'd be almost tempted to sell a half-interest in the
+chicken for a good square meal."
+
+"You shall have one without any such sacrifice," declared Andy. "Come
+along."
+
+They found the clown's tent empty.
+
+"Billy Blow is probably giving Midget an airing," said Andy, half to
+himself.
+
+"Who's Billy Blow?" inquired Luke.
+
+"The clown."
+
+"Do you know a real live clown? Say, that's great!" said Luke. "Must
+keep a fellow laughing all the time."
+
+"I thought so until yesterday," answered Andy. "But no--they have their
+troubles, like other people. This poor, sorrowful fellow has his fill of
+it. He don't do much laughing outside of the ring, I can tell you.
+There, we'll enjoy the cook's gift together."
+
+Andy drew up the bench and handed Luke fully three-quarters of the
+toothsome dainty. It pleased him to see the half-famished boy enjoy the
+feast. Luke poked a good-sized piece of the sake under the cage cover.
+There was a gladsome cluck.
+
+"Two of us happy," announced Luke, with a smile that won Andy's heart.
+
+Andy decided that his new acquaintance was the right sort. Luke had a
+clear, honest face, and there was something in his eye that inspired
+confidence.
+
+"Now, then," said Andy, as his companion munched the last crumb of the
+cake, "let's see your wonderful curiosity."
+
+"I'll do it," replied Luke with alacrity. "Find me a little stick or
+switch, will you?"
+
+Andy went outside to hunt for the required article. As he returned with
+a stake splinter he observed that Luke had uncovered and set down the
+cage, which was a rude wooden affair.
+
+Near it, with a pertly cocked head and magnificently red feathers, stood
+a small rooster. Luke took the stick from Andy's hand.
+
+"Walk, Bolivar!" he ordered.
+
+Andy began to laugh. It was a comical sight. The rooster went strutting
+around the tent backwards as rapidly and steadily as a normal chicken.
+It was ludicrous to watch it proceed, pecking at the ground and
+turning corners.
+
+"Now, then, Bolivar!" said Luke.
+
+He used the stick to direct the rooster, which kept time first with one
+foot and then the other to a tune whistled by its owner, ending with a
+triple pirouette that was superb.
+
+"Well, that's fine!" commented Andy with enthusiasm. "How did you ever
+train it?"
+
+"Didn't," responded Luke frankly--"except for the dancing. I've done
+that with crows and goats, many a time. See here," and he picked up the
+chicken and extended its feet.
+
+"Why," cried Andy, "it was born with its claws turned backwards!"
+
+"That's it," nodded Luke. "See? A regular freak of nature. Odd enough to
+put among the curiosities?"
+
+"It certainly is," voted Andy. "The circus wouldn't use it, though--just
+a side show."
+
+"I don't care," said Luke, "as long as I get started in with the show.
+Can you help me?"
+
+"I'll try to," declared Andy. "Wait here. I want to find Billy Blow and
+tell him about this."
+
+Andy went about the circus grounds until he discovered the clown. Billy
+was quite taken with the chicken, and finally decided to try and place
+the boy with his freak.
+
+He and Luke went away together. When he came back the clown was alone.
+He told Andy that one of the side shows had agreed to try Luke and his
+wonderful chicken for at least a week for the food and keep of both.
+
+Andy went on with the jockey riders in the evening performance. The last
+performance at Clifton was the next forenoon. He had only a glimpse of
+Marco and others of his acquaintance meantime, with everything on
+a rush.
+
+"You see, Tipton is a regular vacation for us folks," Billy Blow
+explained to him. "Country around isn't populous enough for more than
+one day's performances, and then only when the county fair is on. We
+rest two days, and play Saturday. Then is your chance. There's a good
+deal of shifting and taking on new hands. We'll watch out for you.
+You'll see some fun, too. All the new aspirants have been told to show
+up at Tipton."
+
+"Are there many?"
+
+"About five to every town we've played in," declared Billy. "They all
+want to break in, and it's policy to give them a show."
+
+Andy was sent off by the manager to the superintendent of the moving
+crew about noon. There was considerable lifting to do. Andy was tired
+when, about six o'clock in the evening, he climbed up on a loaded wagon
+for the well-earned ride to Tipton.
+
+He had met one of the circus detectives that morning, who told him they
+had so far discovered no trace of Jim Tapp, or his colleagues, or the
+stolen mail bag.
+
+They got to Tipton about eight o'clock in the evening. Andy was "told
+off" to help in the construction work the next morning, and had now
+twelve hours of his own time.
+
+He was hungry, and knowing that it would be difficult to get much to eat
+until late, when the cook's quarters had been re-established, he left
+the wagon as it reached the principal street in Tipton.
+
+Andy went to a restaurant and got a good meal. He decided to stroll
+about a bit, and then join the clown in his new quarters.
+
+Andy had been to Tipton before. His aunt had some acquaintances there.
+He walked up and down the principal street, looking in the store
+windows, and studying the country people who had come to visit the
+county fair.
+
+Suddenly Andy drew back into the shadow of a doorway. Leaning against a
+curb hitching post was a person who enchained his attention.
+
+"It's Tapp--Jim Tapp," said Andy. "I'd know that slouch of his shoulders
+anywhere."
+
+The person under his inspection was swinging a light bamboo cane and
+smoking a cigarette. He wore a jet black moustache and a jet black speck
+of a goatee. Moustache and goatee were unmistakably of the variety Andy
+had seen a circus fakir selling for twenty-five cents, back at Clifton.
+
+Their wearer kept his back to the lighted windows, so that his face was
+in partial shadow. He also kept taking sidelong glances up and down the
+curb, as if expecting some one.
+
+Andy watched him for fully five minutes, made up his mind, and at last
+stealthily glided up behind him.
+
+Seizing both the fellow's arms, he whirled him around face to face, let
+go of him, and with two quick movements of one hand tore the false
+moustache and the false goatee from his face. His surmises were correct.
+It was Jim Tapp.
+
+The latter gave Andy a quick, startled glance.
+
+"Wildwood!" he said, and switched his cane towards Andy's face.
+
+"No, you don't!" cried Andy, grasping his arms again. "Jim Tapp, the
+circus people want you."
+
+"Let go. Nobody wants me. I've done nothing."
+
+"Call Benares Brothers, the stake your partner hit me with, the stolen
+mail bag, nothing?" demanded Andy. "You'll come along with me or I'll
+call the police."
+
+Tapp glanced sharply about. So far nobody seemed to particularly notice
+them. He threw out his own arms and grasped Andy in turn. Thus
+interlocked, he threw out a foot. Andy was taken off his guard. He went
+toppling, but he never let go of his antagonist. Both landed with a
+crash on the board sidewalk.
+
+There was a vacant lot just next to a brilliantly lighted store. As they
+took a roll, they landed nearly at the inner edge of the walk.
+
+"There!" panted Andy, "you won't trip me again."
+
+He was the stronger of the two, and got Tapp on his back. Sitting
+astride of him, Andy caught both hands at the wrists.
+
+"Let go!" panted Tapp. "Say, don't draw a crowd. I'll go with you."
+
+"You'll go with a policeman," declared Andy, glancing along the walk.
+"There'll be one here soon, for the crowd's coming."
+
+"Fight! fight!" yelled three or four urchins, dashing up to the spot.
+
+Others came hurrying along from inspecting the store windows.
+
+"What's the row?" demanded a man.
+
+"Fair fight. Let him up. Give him a chance," growled a low-browed
+fellow, also approaching.
+
+"What is it? what is it?" inquired a fussy old lady, craning her neck
+towards the combatants.
+
+"Say," ground out Tapp, vainly endeavoring to free himself, "let me up.
+It will pay you. Say, I can tell you something great."
+
+"Can you?" smiled Andy calmly. "Tell it to the police."
+
+"Hold on," proceeded Tapp. "I'm not fooling. I know something. I can put
+you on to something big."
+
+"How big?" insinuated Andy, disbelievingly.
+
+"I can, I vow I can! I'm in dead earnest. Say, Wildwood, nobody knows it
+but me--you're an heir--"
+
+"Eh? Bosh! I guess your heir is all hot air. Ah, here comes the
+policeman--oh, gracious! My aunt!"
+
+Andy Wildwood let go his hold of Jim Tapp. With startled eyes, in sheer
+dismay he stared at a woman approaching them, her curiosity aroused by
+the crowd.
+
+It was his aunt, Miss Lavinia Talcott.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+ANDY'S ESCAPE
+
+
+Jim Tapp gave a great wriggle as Andy involuntarily let go his hold of
+the young rascal. His ferret-like eyes twinkled and followed the glance
+of Andy's own.
+
+Tapp was too keen a fellow not to observe that Andy was startled and
+unnerved by the unexpected appearance of some one on the scene.
+
+He probably caught the words spoken by Andy: "My aunt," and presumably
+identified Miss Lavinia Talcott as the cause of the boy's disquietude.
+Further, Jim Tapp knew that Andy had run away from home and had been
+sought for by the police. As it turned out later in Andy Wildwood's
+career, Jim Tapp knew a great deal more than all this put together. In
+fact, he knew some things of which Andy never dreamed.
+
+Andy had been completely driven off his balance at the sight of his
+aunt. It was natural that she should be at Tipton. She went there quite
+often. Loneliness at home and the variety of the county fair at Tipton
+had probably induced her to make the present visit.
+
+Instantly Andy thought of but one thing--to escape recognition. Still,
+the minute he let go of Tapp his presence of mind returned, and he was
+sorry he had lost his nerve on an impulse. It would have been quite an
+easy thing to roll and force his antagonist over the sidewalk edge. Now,
+however, Tapp had wriggled past his reach.
+
+Andy made one grab for him, prostrate on the planks now, missed, rolled
+along, and dropped squarely over the inner edge of the walk five feet
+down into the vacant lot below.
+
+"She didn't see me," he panted--"I'm sure she didn't. Too bad, though! I
+had that fellow, Tapp, tight. Why should I lose him, even now?"
+
+Andy ran under the sidewalk for about ten feet. He rounded a heap of
+sand and glided up a slant where an alley cut in. There he paused,
+hidden by a big billboard. Peering past this barrier he could view the
+crowd he had just left.
+
+"Thief--stop thief!" fell in a frantic yell on his hearers.
+
+To his surprise it was Jim Tapp who uttered the call. He was flinging
+about in great excitement. As a police officer ran up, Andy saw him
+pointing into the vacant lot. He also evidently told some specious story
+to the officer.
+
+The latter jumped into the lot, and two or three followed him. Andy saw
+that he was in danger of discovery, and directed a last glance at the
+crowd on the sidewalk. He saw his aunt's bobbing bonnet retreating from
+the scene. He also saw Jim Tapp, apparently following her. He did not
+dare to go in the same direction.
+
+Andy dodged down the alley and came out on the next street. He looked
+vainly for the two persons in whom he was interested. He failed to
+locate them, and then proceeded in the direction of the circus grounds.
+He was very thoughtful, and in a measure worried and uneasy.
+
+"Tapp is pretty smart," soliloquized Andy. "He's mean, too. If he
+noticed that I was flustered and afraid of Aunt Lavinia seeing me, and
+guesses who she is and connects my running away from home with her, he
+would tell her where I am just out of spite. Wonder if she could have me
+arrested here, in another State?"
+
+Andy was too tired to stay awake over this problem when he located the
+clown's new quarters. Before he retired, however, he got word to the
+circus manager that Jim Tapp was evidently following the circus, and had
+been seen in Tipton that very evening.
+
+The next morning Andy was too busy to give the matter of his aunt's near
+proximity much thought. He worked with a gang hoisting the main tent
+until nearly noon.
+
+"Hi, Wildwood!" hailed a friendly voice, as Andy was leaving the cook's
+tent an hour later.
+
+The speaker was Marco. He made a few inquiries as to how Andy was
+getting along. Then he said: "I saw Miss Stella Starr this morning. You
+know the manager, of course?"
+
+"Mr. Scripps--yes," nodded Andy.
+
+"Well, about two o'clock they're going to line up the amateurs in the
+performance tent. You be there."
+
+"All right," said Andy.
+
+"Benares and Thacher will be on hand. You'll see some fun. Afterwards
+they'll put you through some stunts in dead earnest. It's your chance to
+get in on the tumbling act. Would you like that?"
+
+"I should say so--if I can do it good enough."
+
+"Well, try, anyhow. If you're not up to average, Benares will train you.
+He's taken a fancy to you, and he'll help you along. Some of the
+tumblers leave us here, and they're shy on a full number. If they take
+you, stick hard for ten dollars."
+
+"A month?" said Andy.
+
+"No, a week."
+
+"Gracious!" exclaimed Andy, "that's too good to come out true."
+
+"Stick and strive, Wildwood--the motto will win," declared Marco.
+
+When Andy went to the performers' tent at two o'clock, he found over
+fifty persons there. In its centre a balancing bar had been put up. An
+old circus horse stood at one side. Some low trapezes were swung from a
+post. A number of the circus people were lounging on benches in one
+corner of the tent. In another corner on other benches some twenty
+persons, mostly boys, were gathered.
+
+"Here, you're not on show yet," spoke Benares, the trapezist, pulling
+Andy beside him as he passed along. "Your turn will come after they get
+rid of those aspirants yonder."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+A FULL-FLEDGED ACROBAT
+
+
+The circus manager sat in a chair at the edge of a little sawdust ring
+that had been marked out for the occasion. The ringmaster stood near
+him, in charge of the ceremonies.
+
+"Now, then, my friends," observed this individual in a sharp, snappy
+way, "you people want a chance to get on as performers. That's good. We
+are always looking for fresh talent. Show your paces. Who's first?"
+
+A big, loutish fellow with an ungainly walk stepped forward. He was
+wrapped up in a tarpaulin. As he let it drop it was like a
+transformation scene.
+
+It seemed that some of the mischievous candy peddlers had got hold of
+him. They had induced him to appear for trial in costume.
+
+He wore a pair of tights three sizes too small for him. They had
+powdered his hair with fine sawdust and daubed his face with chalk and
+dyes. They had stuffed out his stockings until his calves resembled
+sticks of knotted wood.
+
+The manager nearly fell over in his chair with repressed laughter. The
+audience was one vast chuckle.
+
+"Well, sir," spoke up the ringmaster, with difficulty keeping a straight
+face, "what can you do?"
+
+"I'd like to be a clown," grinned the victim.
+
+"A clown, sir. Good. Let's see you act."
+
+The fellow capered into the ring. One stocking came down, letting out a
+quart of sawdust. One tight split up to the knee as he made a jig step
+that brought the tears to the eyes of Billy Blow, who, with his boy, had
+come to witness the show.
+
+Then the fellow sang a funny song. It was funny. His voice was cracked,
+his delivery dolorous. He began to shuffle at the end of it.
+
+"Faster, faster, sir!" cried the ringmaster, snapping his whip across
+the bare limb exposed. "Faster, I tell you!"
+
+"Ouch!" yelled the aspirant.
+
+"Come, sir, faster. I say faster, faster, faster! Purely ring practice,
+my friend. We do this to all the clowns, you know."
+
+With the pitiless accuracy of a bullwhacker the ringmaster pursued his
+victim. The whip-lash landed squarely every time, biting like a hornet.
+The aspirant was now on the run.
+
+"Stop! Don't! Help!" he roared. "I don't want to be a clown!" and with a
+bellow he ran out of the tent, followed by the hooting candy peddlers.
+
+"Well, who are you?" demanded the ringmaster of two colored boys who
+stepped forward.
+
+"Double trapeze act, sir," said one of them.
+
+"Oh, here you are. Let's see what you can do."
+
+The ringmaster set free the temporary trapeze rigging.
+
+These aspirants did quite well, singly. When they doubled, however,
+there was trouble.
+
+The one swinging from the hands of the other lost his grip. He caught
+out wildly, grabbed at the shirt sleeve of his partner to save himself.
+This tightened the garment at the neck. Then it gave way, buttons and
+all. Both tumbled to the ground. They began upbraiding one another, came
+to blows, and the ringmaster sent them about their business, saying the
+show could not encourage prize fighters.
+
+The programme continued. There was an ambitious lad who was quite a
+wonder at turning rapid cartwheels. Another did some creditable pole
+balancing. One old man wanted to serve as a magician. All had a chance,
+but their merit was not distinguished enough to warrant their
+engagement.
+
+Most of the crowd filed out when the last of the amateurs had done his
+"stunt." Benares then stepped up to the ringmaster and beckoned to Andy.
+
+At his direction Andy threw off his coat and hat, and old Benares led
+the horse Andy had noticed into the main tent. It was a steady-paced,
+slow-going steed. The ringmaster got it started around the ring.
+
+"Do your best now, Wildwood," whispered Marco, who with the clown and
+the manager had followed into the main tent.
+
+Andy was on his mettle. He made a run, took a leap and landed on the
+platform on the horse's back just as he had done a hundred times back
+at Fairview.
+
+"Very good," nodded the ringmaster, as Andy rode around the ring,
+posing, several times.
+
+"Try the spring plank next," suggested the manager.
+
+The single and double somersault were Andy's specialty. The apparatus
+was superb. He was not quite perfect, but old Benares patted him on the
+shoulder after several efforts, with the words:
+
+"Fine--vary fine."
+
+Andy did some creditable twisting on the trapeze, the manager and the
+ringmaster conversing together, meantime.
+
+"Report to me in the morning," said the latter to Andy at last.
+
+Marco followed the manager as he left the tent. He came back with a
+pleased expression of face.
+
+"It's all right, lad," he reported. "You're in the ring group as a sub.
+He tried to chisel me down, but I insisted on fair pay, and it's ten
+dollars a week for you."
+
+Andy was delighted. That amount seemed a small fortune to him. No danger
+now of not being able to pay back to Graham the borrowed five dollars
+and his other Fairview debts.
+
+Benares took him in hand after the others had left. He gave him a great
+many training suggestions. He led him into the regular practicing tent
+and showed him "the mecanique." This was a device with a wooden arm from
+which hung an elastic rope. Harnessed in this, a performer could attempt
+all kinds of contortions without scoring a fall.
+
+Benares also showed Andy how to make effective standing somersaults by
+"the tuck trick," This was to grasp both legs tightly half-way between
+the knees and ankles, pressing them close together. At the same time the
+acrobat was to put the muscles of the shoulders and back in full play.
+The combined muscular force acted like a balance-weight of a wheel, and
+enabled that neat, finished somersault which always brought down
+the house.
+
+"You ought to try the slack wire, too, when you get a chance," advised
+Benares. "We'll try you on the high trapeze in the triple act, some
+time. Glad you're in the profession, Wildwood, and we'll all give you a
+lift when we can."
+
+Andy felt that he had found some of the best friends in the world, and
+was a full-fledged acrobat at last as he left the circus tent.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+AMONG THE CAGES
+
+
+"Hi! Hello--stop, stop."
+
+"Oh, it's you, Luke Belding?"
+
+Andy, passing through the circus grounds, turned at an eager hail. The
+owner of the chicken that walked backwards came running after him. He
+caught Andy's arm and smiled genially into his face.
+
+"Well," spoke Andy, surveying Luke in a pleased way. "You look
+prosperous."
+
+In fact Luke did present signs of a betterment over his first forlorn
+appearance on the circus scene.
+
+He wore a new jacket and a neat collar and necktie. His face had no
+trouble in it now. He presented the appearance of a person eminently
+satisfied with the present and full of hope and animation for
+the future.
+
+"Prosperous?" he declaimed volubly--"I guess I am. Square meals, a sure
+berth for a week, jolly friends--and, oh, say! you're one of the
+true ones."
+
+"Am I?" smiled Andy--"I'm glad to hear you say so."
+
+"Billy Blow is another. He got me on at a side show. They give me my
+keep, ten per cent, on what photographs I sell, and togged me out
+respectable looking, gratis."
+
+"Good for you," commended Andy heartily. "And what of the famous
+chicken?"
+
+"In capital trim. Say, that wise little rooster seems to know he's on
+exhibition. There's some monkeys in our tent. He steals their food,
+fights them, cuts up all kinds of antics. Boss says he thinks he will be
+a drawing card. I've got him to turn a somersault now. Come on."
+
+"Come where?"
+
+"I want to show you. See there. Isn't that grand, now?"
+
+Luke led Andy into the tent where the side show was. A big frame covered
+with cheese cloth took up the entire width of the place. Upon this a man
+with a brush was liberally spreading several quarts of glaring red and
+yellow paint.
+
+"Greatest Curiosity In The World--Remarkable Freak of Nature--The Famous
+Bolivar Trick Rooster, Who Walks Backwards"--so much of the grand
+announcement to the circus public had been already painted on the sign.
+
+"They're bound to give you a chance, anyhow," observed Andy. "And I must
+say I am mighty glad of it."
+
+"And see here," continued Luke animatedly. "Come on, old fellow. Easy,
+now. Ah, he wants a lump of sugar."
+
+Luke had approached a very strongly-built cage.
+
+Its occupant was one of the largest and ugliest-looking monkeys Andy had
+ever seen.
+
+It bristled and snarled at Andy, but as Luke opened the cage door leaped
+into his arms, snuggled there, and began petting his face with one paw.
+
+Luke gave the animal a lump of sugar, coaxed it, stroked it. Then he
+took it over to where an impromptu slack wire was strung between two
+posts, and set the monkey on this.
+
+The animal went through some evolutions that were so perfect an
+imitation of first-class human trapeze performance, that Andy was fairly
+astonished.
+
+"The people here give me great credit on that," announced Luke with
+happy eyes, as he put the monkey back in his cage. "They were just going
+to kill him when I came here"
+
+"Kill him--what for?" asked Andy.
+
+"Oh, he was so savage. He bit off an attendant's finger, and maimed two
+smaller monkeys. He wouldn't do anything but sulk and show his teeth all
+day long. I got at him. When he first grabbed my hand in his teeth I
+just let it stay there. Never tried to get it away or fight him. Just
+looked him in the eyes sort of reproachfully, and began to boo-hoo. Oh,
+I cried artistic, I did. Say, that monkey just stared at me, dropped my
+hand and began to bellow at the top of his voice, too. Then he got sorry
+and licked my hand. A lump of sugar sealed the compact. Why, he's the
+smartest animal in the show. You see what he did for me. The people here
+are delighted. It's made me solid with them."
+
+Luke introduced Andy to the "Wild Man," a most peaceable-looking
+individual out of his acting disguise. His wife was the Fat Woman, who
+did not act as if she was very much afraid of her supposed savage and
+untamable husband.
+
+"I want you to do something for me," said Luke, presently. "Will you?"
+
+"I'll try," answered Andy.
+
+"I'd like to go through the menagerie. You see I'm not regular, so,
+while I have the run of the small tops, they won't pass me in at the
+big flaps."
+
+Andy walked over with his new acquaintance to the menagerie. The
+watchman at the door admitted them at a word from Andy.
+
+The trainers, keepers and manager were busy about the place, feeding the
+animals, cleaning the cages and the like.
+
+Luke's eyes sparkled as if at last he found himself in his element. He
+petted the camels affectionately, and talked to the elephants in a
+purring, winning tone that made more than one of them look at him as if
+pleased at his attention.
+
+The lion cages were Luke's grand centre of interest. He stood watching
+old Sultan, the king of the menagerie, like one entranced.
+
+Luke began talking to the beast in a musical, coaxing tone. The animal
+sat grim as a statue. Luke thrust his hand into his pocket. As he
+withdrew it he rested his fingers on the edge of the cage.
+
+The lion never stirred, but its eyes described a quick, rolling
+movement.
+
+"Look out!" warned Andy--"he's watching you."
+
+"I want him to," answered Luke coolly.
+
+"But--"
+
+Luke continued his animal lullaby, he kept extending his hand. Straight
+up towards the lion's face he raised his arm fearlessly, now inside the
+danger line fully to the elbow.
+
+"Hi! Back! Thunder! He'll eat you alive!" yelled a trainer, discovering
+the lad's venturesome position.
+
+"S-sh. Good old fellow. Purr-rr. So--so."
+
+Old Sultan bristled. Then his corded sinews relaxed. He lowered his
+muzzle. Andy stroked it gently. The animal sniffed and snuffed at his
+hand. He began to lick it.
+
+Just then the trainer ran up. He gave Luke a violent jerk backwards,
+throwing him prostrate in the sawdust. With a frightful roar Sultan
+sprang at the bars of the cage, glaring apparently not at Luke, but at
+the trainer.
+
+"Do you want to lose an arm?" shouted the latter, angrily. "You chump!
+that animal is a man-eater."
+
+"I'm only a boy, though, you see?" said Luke, arising and brushing the
+sawdust from his clothes. "He wouldn't hurt me."
+
+"Wouldn't, eh? Why--"
+
+"He didn't, all the same. Did he, now? Say, mister, I'm a side show
+actor just now, but some day I'll work up to the cages here. Bet you I
+can make friends with your fiercest member."
+
+"Bah! you keep away from those cages."
+
+"How did you dare to do that?" asked Andy, as the boys came out of the
+menagerie.
+
+"Why, I'll tell you," explained Luke. "I love animals, and most times
+they seem to know it. Once a lion tamer summered at our farm on account
+of poor health. He told me a lot of things about his business. One thing
+I tried just now. I've got a lot of fine sugar flavored with anise in my
+pocket. When I tackled Sultan I had my hand covered with it. Any wild
+animal loves the smell of anise. You saw me try it on their champion,
+and it worked, didn't it?"
+
+"You are a strange kind of a fellow, Luke," said Andy studying his
+companion interestedly.
+
+"That so?" smiled Luke. "I don't see why. You fancy tumbling. I'm dead
+gone on the cages. We both have our especial ambitions--say, I haven't
+caught your name yet."
+
+"Andy."
+
+"All right, Andy. Going to use your full name on the circus posters, or
+just Andy?"
+
+"The circus posters are a long way ahead," smiled Andy. "But if I ever
+get that far I think I'll use my right name--Andy Wildwood."
+
+"Eh? What's that? Andy Wildwood!" exclaimed Luke.
+
+Andy was amazed at a sharp start and shout on the part of his companion.
+
+"Why, what now--" he began.
+
+"Andy Wildwood? Andy--Wildwood?" repeated Luke.
+
+He spoke in a retrospective, subdued tone. He tapped his head as if
+trying to awaken some sleeping memory.
+
+"Got it now!" he cried suddenly. "Why, sure, of course. Knew the name in
+a minute."
+
+Luke seized and pulled at a lock of his hair as if it was a sprouting
+idea.
+
+"You came from Fairville," he resumed.
+
+"Fairview."
+
+"Then you're the same. Yes, you must be the fellow--Andy Wildwood, the
+heir."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+FACING THE ENEMY
+
+
+The young acrobat stared hard at Luke Belding. He wondered if the embryo
+lion tamer was crazy--or had he not heard him aright?
+
+Instantly Andy's mind ran back to the encounter with Jim Tapp on the
+streets of Tipton the evening previous.
+
+This made the second time, then, within twenty-four hours that an
+allusion had been made to the fact that he was "an heir."
+
+Andy knew of no reason why a sudden mystery should come into his life.
+The coincidence of the double reference to the same thing, however,
+namely, an alleged heirship, struck him as peculiar.
+
+"Heir," he spoke in a bewildered tone--"me an heir?"
+
+"Yes," said Luke.
+
+"Heir to what?"
+
+"Why--oh, something, I don't know what. But the thing you're heir to is
+there."
+
+"Where?" persisted Andy.
+
+"I don't know that, either--Fairview, I reckon."
+
+"Nonsense. I've got nothing at Fairview excepting a lot of debts. I wish
+you'd explain yourself, Luke. There can't be anything to your absurd
+statement."
+
+"Can't there?" cried Luke excitedly. "Well, you just listen and see--"
+
+"Oh, Wildwood--been looking for you," interrupted some one, just there.
+
+Andy looked up to recognize Marco. The latter nodded to Luke, and
+proceeded to lead Andy away with him.
+
+"Hold on," demurred Luke.
+
+"You'll have to excuse your friend just now," said Marco. "Very
+important, Wildwood," he added.
+
+"What is it, Mr. Marco?" inquired Andy.
+
+Marco showed two folded sheets of writing paper in his hand.
+
+"Your contract with the circus," he explained. "There's a bad hitch in
+this business. Hope to straighten it out, but we'll have to get right at
+it. Come to Billy Blow's tent. I want to have a private talk with you."
+
+Andy traced a seriousness in Marco's manner that oppressed him.
+Instantly all his mind was fixed on the matter of the contracts.
+
+"I'll see you a little later, Luke," he said to his young friend.
+
+"All right," nodded Luke. "I've got a good deal to tell you. But it will
+keep."
+
+When they reached the clown's tent Marco sat down on the bench beside
+Andy.
+
+"Business, Wildwood," he spoke, briskly tapping the papers in his hand.
+"I wanted to get you fixed right, and started right in to get a contract
+from Mr. Scripps."
+
+"Is that it?" asked Andy.
+
+"Yes, and favorable in every way--your end of it, and the circus end is
+all right. But there's another end. That is it. I reckon you'd better
+get the gist of the trouble by reading it over."
+
+Marco separated one of the written sheets and passed it to Andy.
+
+"Oh, dear!" cried the latter in dismay the moment his eyes had taken in
+the general subject matter of the screed before him. "That settles it."
+
+Andy's face ran quickly from consternation to utter gloom.
+
+The document before him was a legally-worded affair awaiting a
+signature. It stated that "Miss Lavinia Talcott, guardian relative of
+Andrew Wildwood, minor, hereby agreed to hold the circus management free
+from any blame, damage or indemnity in case of accident to the said
+Andrew Wildwood, this day and date a contracted employee of said circus
+management."
+
+"She'll never sign it!" cried Andy positively. "How did they come to
+bring her name into this business, anyhow?"
+
+"Hold hard. Don't get excited, Wildwood," advised Marco. "Business is
+business, even if it is unpleasant sometimes. You've got the facts.
+Don't grumble at them. Let's see how we can remedy things."
+
+"They can't be remedied," declared Andy forcibly. "Why, Mr. Marco, I
+wouldn't meet my aunt for a hundred dollars, and I couldn't get her to
+sign any such a paper if it meant a thousand dollars to me."
+
+Marco stroked his chin thoughtfully and in perplexity.
+
+"Then the jig's up," he announced definitely. "You see, Wildwood, we've
+had all kinds of trouble--suits, judgments, injunctions--along of
+fellows getting hurt in the show. One man lost an ear in the
+knife-throwing act. He recovered two thousand dollars damages. Another
+sprained an ankle. Had to pay him eight dollars a week for six months.
+Now they put the clause in the contract holding the circus harmless in
+such matters. Where it's a minor, they insist further that parent or
+guardian also sign off all claims."
+
+"But I have neither," said Andy. "Miss Lavinia is only a half-aunt."
+
+"Well, Miss Starr explained just how matters stood to Mr. Scripps. He
+hasn't got time to quibble over your aunt. Her signature fixes
+it--otherwise you're left out in the cold."
+
+Andy was never so dispirited in all his life. He sat dumb and wretched,
+like a person suddenly finding his house collapsed all about him, and
+himself in the midst of its ruins.
+
+"Look here, Wildwood," said Marco kindly, arising after a reflective
+pause, "you think this thing over. You're a pretty smart young fellow,
+and you'll disappoint me a good deal if you don't find some way out of
+this dilemma."
+
+Andy shook his head doubtfully. He sat dejected and crestfallen for a
+full hour. Then he left the circus grounds, evading friends and
+acquaintances purposely. He went away from the town, reached meadows and
+woods, and finally threw himself down under a great sheltering tree.
+
+Andy thought hard. There was certainly a check to his show career unless
+he secured the sanction and cooperation of his aunt.
+
+Judging from existing circumstances, Andy utterly despaired of moving
+his unlovable, stubborn-minded relative towards any action that would
+favor him. Especially was this true after he had defied her authority
+and run away from home.
+
+"If Mr. Harding's circus won't take me without this restriction, why
+should any other show?" mused Andy. "Oh, dear! Just as things looked so
+bright and hopeful, to have this happen--"
+
+The boy gulped, trying hard to keep back the tears of vexation and
+disappointment. Then he became indignant. He got actually mad as he
+decided that he was a victim of rank injustice.
+
+He arose under the spur of violent varied emotions, pacing the spot
+excitedly, wrestling with the problem that threatened to destroy all his
+fond youthful ambitions.
+
+Gradually his mind cleared. Gradually, too, a better balance came to his
+thoughts. He went logically and seriously over the situation.
+
+Daylight was just going as Andy arrived at a heroic decision.
+
+"There's only one way," he said slowly and firmly. "It looks hopeless,
+but I'm going to try. Yes, make or break, I'm going to face Aunt
+Lavinia boldly."
+
+Andy Wildwood started in the direction of Tipton.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+ANDY'S AUNT
+
+
+Andy went straight to an old dwelling house in a retired part of the
+town.
+
+He had been there twice before when younger, and remembered that an old
+couple named Norman lived there.
+
+The Normans were distant relatives of his Aunt Lavinia. She had other
+acquaintances in Tipton, but, Andy recalled, usually made the Norman
+home her headquarters, paying them some small sum for board and lodging
+whenever she visited them.
+
+The old ramshackly house stood far back from the street. Its front fence
+was broken down, and Andy crossed the lot from the side.
+
+There was no light downstairs except in the kitchen at the rear. An
+upstairs middle room, however, seemed occupied, for chinks of light came
+through the half-closed outside shutters.
+
+The slats of these were turned upwards, to catch light in the daytime
+and shut out a view from street and garden.
+
+Just beneath this window was a door and steps. The latter had nearly
+rotted away, and the door was nailed up and out of use. A framework
+formed of hoop poles rose up from the steps. Once green vines had
+enclosed these. At present, however, only a few dead strands clung to
+the original framework.
+
+The half-open top of this framework was not three feet under the window
+sill of the lighted room. Across it lay some fishing poles and nets,
+also some old garden tools, it apparently being used as a catch-all for
+useless truck about the place for a long time past.
+
+"I'll assume that aunt is in that room," thought Andy, halting near the
+hoop-pole framework and looking up at the window. "She always has the
+middle room here. Yes, she is there, and a man with her. Maybe I'd
+better skirmish around a little, instead of running the risk of being
+nabbed before I can have an explanation. I want a little private talk
+with aunt, alone, if I can get it."
+
+Andy bent his ear. He caught no words, only the sound of human voices.
+His aunt's high, strained tones were unmistakable.
+
+He seized one of the supporting poles of the framework. It rattled and
+quivered, yet he believed it would hold him if he proceeded carefully.
+It was no trick at all for Andy to make a quiet and rapid ascent. He
+perched across the top of the framework and raised his head.
+
+Andy saw his aunt closing up a packed satchel on a chair. She had her
+bonnet on, as if just going out.
+
+At the hallway door was a man taking his leave.
+
+He was excessively polite, hat in hand, and making a most respectful
+bow.
+
+"Well!" commented Andy, fairly aghast.
+
+Andy recognized the man instantly. He was the individual he had seen in
+the hay barn. He was Daley's companion, the man who had "doctored" the
+Benares Brothers' trapeze in the circus at Centreville.
+
+In a flash Andy fancied he understood the situation, the motive of this
+fellow's presence here and now.
+
+"Jim Tapp found out my aunt," theorized Andy rapidly. "He, this fellow,
+and the mail thieves are all in a crowd. Murdock here has probably come
+to tell my aunt that he knows where I am. She may have made a bargain to
+pay him well if he will kidnap me, or in any way get me back to
+Fairview. It's a fine fix to be in!" concluded Andy bitterly.
+
+He was for getting back to the ground, going to the circus, turning in
+the contract, giving up all hopes of show life, and getting to a safe
+distance before his enemies could capture him.
+
+"No, I won't!" resolved Andy a second later, acting on a new impulse.
+"At least, not right away. I'll turn one trick on my enemies, first. The
+circus detectives want this scoundrel, Murdock, bad. I'll get down,
+follow him, and have him arrested the first policeman we meet."
+
+Andy, bent on a descent, paused. Murdock was speaking.
+
+"Are you going back home to Fairview to-night, Miss Talcott?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," snapped Andy's aunt in her usual quick; sharp way.
+
+"Then I will call on you at Fairview."
+
+"If you want to," was the ungracious answer.
+
+"No, no," softly declared the oily rogue--"if you want me to, madam.
+This is your business, Miss Talcott."
+
+"Oh," observed Andy's aunt snappily, "you're working for nothing, I
+suppose?"
+
+"I'm not," frankly answered Murdock. "I'm working for a fee. What I get,
+though, is so small compared with what you may get--"
+
+"Very well," interrupted Miss Lavinia, "when you have this matter in a
+clear, definite shape, I shall be ready to listen to you."
+
+"Good evening, then, madam."
+
+"Evening," retorted Andy's aunt with a curt nod, going on with her
+packing.
+
+Andy rested his hand against the house to get a purchase and leap to the
+ground.
+
+"Pshaw!" he exclaimed abruptly.
+
+One of the hoop poles bent nearly in two, throwing him off his balance.
+
+Andy caught at the window sill, and his body slipped to one side. He
+tried to drop, found himself impeded, and held himself steady,
+looking down.
+
+His rustling about had made something of a racket. As he was seeking to
+determine what had caught and held the side of his coat, one of the
+wooden shutters was thrust violently open.
+
+Its edge struck his head. He dodged aside. Then he sat staring, the full
+light from within the room showing him to its occupant as plain as day.
+
+"Um!" commented Miss Lavinia, simply. "Some one was there. And you, Andy
+Wildwood!"
+
+Andy was taken aback. His aunt was not particularly startled. She rather
+looked stern and suspicious. She did not grab him, or call for help, or
+seem to care whether he came in or stayed out.
+
+"Yes, it's me, Aunt," said Andy, a good deal crestfallen and
+embarrassed. "You see, I wanted to see you--"
+
+"Then why didn't you come like a civilized being! The house has doors.
+Tell me, do you intend to come in?"
+
+"If you please, aunt."
+
+"You may do so."
+
+"Thank you," fluttered Andy.
+
+He now discovered that his coat had caught in half-a-dozen fish hooks
+attached to an eel line all tangled up in the framework. It took him
+fully two minutes to get free. Andy climbed over the window sill and
+stood fumbling his cap. His old awe of his dictatorial relative was as
+strong as ever within him.
+
+"Can't you sit down?" she demanded, sinking to a chair herself and
+facing him steadily. "How long have you been outside there?"
+
+"Only a few minutes," answered Andy.
+
+"Did you see anybody in this room beside myself?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am--a man."
+
+"And eavesdropping, I suppose?" insinuated Miss Lavinia.
+
+"I heard him say 'good night,'"
+
+"Um!" commented Miss Lavinia. That closed the subject for the present.
+She had always known Andy to be a truthful boy, and his reply seemed to
+satisfy her and relieve her mind.
+
+Andy wondered what he had better say first. The fixed, set stare of his
+stern, uncompromising relative made him nervous.
+
+"See here, aunt," he blurted out at last, "I've never seemed to do
+anything right I did for you, and you don't care a snap for me. I don't
+see why you keep hounding me down and wanting me back home."
+
+"I don't."
+
+"Eh?" ejaculated Andy.
+
+"No, I don't," declared Miss Lavinia.
+
+"You don't want me back at Fairview?"
+
+"I said so, didn't I?" snapped Miss Lavinia.
+
+"Then--then--"
+
+"See here, Andy Wildwood," interrupted his aunt in a tone of severity,
+"you have been a disobedient, ungrateful boy. You deserve to be locked
+up. I've tried to have you. I am so satisfied, however, on reflection,
+that you will have a bad ending anyhow, that I have decided to wash my
+hands of you."
+
+"Glory!" uttered Andy to himself, in a vast thrill of delight.
+
+"Have you joined the circus?" continued Miss Lavinia.
+
+"They won't have me--"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Without your sanction. They want you to sign away any claims as to
+damages, if I get hurt. I knew you wouldn't do that."
+
+"You are mistaken, Andy Wildwood--I will do it."
+
+"It's too easy to be true!" breathed Andy, in wild amazement. "You--you
+will sign such a paper?" he stammered.
+
+"Didn't I say so? Let me understand. You wish to cut loose from home and
+friends for good, do you? You don't want to ever return to Fairview?"
+
+"Not till I'm rich and famous," answered Andy.
+
+"H'm! Very well. What have I got to sign?"
+
+"That's it," said Andy, with eager hand drawing a written sheet from his
+pocket.
+
+Miss Lavinia opened the document, read it through, went to the table,
+took a fountain pen from her reticule, signed the paper, returned it
+to Andy.
+
+"I'm dreaming! it's a plot of some kind!" murmured Andy, lost in
+wonderment.
+
+Miss Lavinia took out her pocket-book.
+
+"Andy Wildwood," she said, her harsh features as mask-like as ever,
+"here are ten dollars. It is the last cent I will ever give you. When
+you leave here you sever all ties between us. I have only one
+stipulation to make. You will not disgrace me by having anything to do
+with anybody in Fairview."
+
+"That's all right," said Andy. "I'll agree, except that I've got to
+write to Mr. Graham on business."
+
+"What business?"
+
+Andy explained in full. If he had been more versed in the wiles of the
+world, less astonished at his aunt's strange compliance with his dearest
+wishes, he would have noticed a keen suspiciousness in the glance with
+which she continually regarded him.
+
+"I must insist that you do not write even to Graham," she remarked.
+"About what you owe--I will pay that. Yes, I'll start you out clear. You
+won't write to Graham?"
+
+"No," said Andy slowly--"if you insist on it."
+
+"I will settle the five dollars you owe Graham," promised Miss Lavinia,
+"I will pay the bill of damages at the school and to Farmer Dale, and
+send you the receipts. Does that suit you?"
+
+"Why--yes," answered Andy in a bewildered tone.
+
+"You take that pen and a sheet of paper. Write an order on Graham to
+deliver to me those old family mementos you pawned to him. Also, give me
+your address for a few weeks ahead."
+
+Andy did this.
+
+"And now, good night and good-bye," spoke his aunt. "I hope you'll some
+day see the error of your ways, Andy Wildwood."
+
+Miss Lavinia did not offer to shake hands with Andy. She nodded towards
+the door to dismiss him, as she would have done to a perfect stranger.
+
+"Good-bye, Aunt Lavinia," said Andy. "You're thinking a little hard of
+me. But you've done a big thing in signing that paper, and I'll never do
+anything to make you ashamed of me. Ginger! am I afoot or horseback?
+Permission to join the show! Ten dollars! Oh my head is just whirling!"
+
+These last sentences Andy tittered in a vivid gasp as he went down the
+stairs and once more reached the outer air.
+
+He hurried from the vicinity, fearful that his aunt might change her
+mind and call him back.
+
+"I don't understand it," he mused. "I can't figure it out. That paper
+fixes it so she can't stop me joining the show, nor force me back to
+Fairview. Then what is she having dealings with Murdock for?"
+
+Andy could not solve this puzzle, and did not try to do so any further.
+
+Within an hour the two precious documents were "signed, sealed and
+delivered," and Andy Wildwood entered on his career as a salaried
+circus acrobat.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+A BEAR ON THE RAMPAGE
+
+
+"Hoop-la!"
+
+All a-spangle, to the blare of quick music, the great tent ablaze with
+light, the rows of benches crush-crowded with excited humanity, Andy
+Wildwood left the spring-board. For a second he whirled in midair. Then,
+gracefully landing on the padded carpet, he made his bow amid pleased
+plaudits and rejoined the row of fellow tumblers.
+
+"You've caught the knack," spoke the ringmaster encouragingly. "Be
+careful on the double somersault, though."
+
+"It's just as easy to me," asserted Andy.
+
+He proved his words when his turn came again. He was breathless but all
+aglow, as he and his seven fellow acrobats bowed in a row and retired to
+the performers' tent.
+
+Andy was delighted with himself, his comrades, his
+environment--everything. In fact, a constant glamour of excitement and
+enjoyment had come into his life.
+
+This was the second day after his strange interview with his aunt. It
+was the last evening performance of the show at Tipton.
+
+Andy had been away from the circus for two days. The morning after
+handing in the contracts, the manager had selected him to accompany the
+chief hostler and four of his assistants on a trip into the country.
+
+The show was to make a long jump after closing the engagement at Tipton.
+While Mr. Harding joined a second enterprise he owned in the West, the
+present outfit was to take up a route in the South.
+
+Many of those connected with the show were to leave. This cut the
+working force down. They had too many horses, and with a string of fifty
+of these the chief hostler started out to sell off the same.
+
+The expedition continued a day and a half. When Andy came back, he found
+himself in time for two rehearsals. That evening he made his first
+appearance in public as a real professional.
+
+Outside of the charm of being seen, appreciated and applauded by others,
+Andy loved the vigorous exercise of the spring-board. The mechanical
+athletic and acrobatic equipments of the show were superb. He made up
+his mind he could about live among the balancing bars and trapezes, if
+they would let him.
+
+One disappointment Andy met with that somewhat troubled him. When he
+came back from the horse-selling expedition, he found that Luke Belding
+had left the show.
+
+Billy Blow told Andy that Luke had been to his tent a dozen times to see
+him. That morning early, before Andy's return, the side show Luke was
+with had packed up and shipped by train to join a show going east.
+
+"So I'll never find out what I'm heir to," smiled Andy. "Oh, well, of
+course it was some absurd guess of Luke's. It's funny, though. That
+fellow, Jim Tapp, had the same delusion. By the way, Aunt Lavinia seems
+to have been in earnest. Nobody appears to be looking for me to go back
+to Fairview. I am free to do as I choose. Now, then, to make a record."
+
+Sunday was passed at Tipton. Of the better class in the show, nearly all
+the lady performers and some of the men went to church, and Andy went
+also. In the afternoon Billy Blow went the rounds of some friends, and
+took Andy with him.
+
+It revealed a new phase of circus life, the domestic side, to Andy.
+There was no "shop talk." The boy passed a pleasant hour among several
+very charming family circles.
+
+Next day everybody pitched into genuine hard work. The circus train had
+been sent for, and occupied a long railroad siding.
+
+Andy was amazed at the system and order of the proposed transit. The
+train was on a big scale. The manager had a car to himself. The star
+performers were cared for in luxurious parlor coaches. Even the minor
+employees were well-housed, and feeding arrangements for man and beast
+were perfect.
+
+In order to reach their destination, which was Montgomery, a central
+southern city, the train made many shifts from one railway line to
+another. This took time, and necessitated many unpleasant stoppages
+and waits.
+
+It was the second day of the trip when they were side-tracked at a
+little way station. Here it was given out they would remain from noon
+until midnight, awaiting a fruit express which would pick them up and
+deliver them at terminus.
+
+Billy Blow, his Boy Midget, and Andy had a compartment in a tourists'
+car. When the long stop was announced, Andy was glad to get a chance to
+stretch his limbs.
+
+He interested himself for more than an hour watching the menagerie men
+attend to the animals. They were fed and watered, their quarters neatly
+renovated, while a veterinarian went from cage to cage examining them
+professionally and treating those that were sick or ailing.
+
+Big Bob, the star bear of the show, had in some way run a great sliver
+into one paw. This had festered the flesh, and bruin, bound with stout
+ropes, had been brought out of his cage on a wheeled litter, and laid on
+the grass for careful treatment.
+
+Andy watched the skilful doctoring of the big, bellowing fellow with
+curiosity. Then he strolled off into a stretch of timber to enjoy a
+brief walk.
+
+He reached a deliciously cool and shady nook, and threw himself down at
+the mossy trunk of a tree to rest in the midst of fresh air, peaceful
+solitude and merrily singing birds.
+
+Andy was lost in a soothing day dream when a great rustle made him sit
+up, startled.
+
+A dark object passed close by him in and out among the bushes. It was of
+great size, and was making its way fast and furiously.
+
+"I declare!" cried Andy, springing to his feet, "if it isn't the bear.
+Now how in the world did he get loose?"
+
+Andy stood for a moment staring in wonder after the disappearing animal.
+It was certainly Big Bob. The animal was fully familiar to Andy. The
+beast wobbled to one side as it ran, and this the boy discerned was due
+to the sore paw. He was a fugitive, and his escape had been discovered.
+Andy could surmise this from shouts and calls in the distance, back in
+the direction of the circus train.
+
+Big Bob had a bad reputation with the menagerie men. At times placid and
+even good-natured, on other occasions he was capricious, savage and
+dangerous. Even his trainer had narrowly escaped a death blow from one
+of the animal's enormous paws when the brute was in one of its tantrums.
+
+The bear was lumbering along as if bent on getting a good start against
+pursuit. He chose a sheltered route as if instinctively cunning. Andy,
+acting on a quick impulse, started after the bear.
+
+The route led up a hill. Big Bob scaled a moderately steep incline and
+disappeared over its crest.
+
+Andy, reaching this, glanced backwards. From that height he could look
+well over the country.
+
+The belated train was in sight. From it, armed with pikes and ropes, a
+dozen or more menagerie men were running.
+
+The alarm had spread to the settlement of houses near by. Andy saw
+several men armed with shotguns and rifles scouring adjacent wood
+stretches.
+
+"I won't dare to tackle the bear, but I'll try and run him down till he
+gets tired," thought Andy.
+
+He remembered many a discussion of the menagerie men over the real
+danger and loss involved in the escape of an animal. The fugitive rarely
+did much damage except to hen roosts, beyond scaring human beings. The
+trouble was that armed farmers, pursuing, thought it great sport to
+bring down the fugitive with a shot. Big Bob was worth a good deal of
+money to the show. The principal aim of the menagerie men, therefore,
+was to prevent the slaughter of an escaped animal.
+
+Down the hill bruin ran and Andy after him. Then there was a country
+road and Big Bob put down this. Andy could easily outrun the fugitive,
+but this was not his policy for the present. The disabled foot of the
+animal diminished his normal speed. Andy believed that bruin would soon
+find and harbor himself in some cozy nook.
+
+At a turn in the road Andy noticed that there was a house a few hundred
+feet ahead. Beyond this several other dwellings were scattered about the
+landscape.
+
+"I don't like that," mused Andy. "It may mean trouble. I'd rather see
+the old scamp take to the open country. Wonder if I can head him off?"
+
+Andy leaped a field fence. He doubled his pace, got even with Big Bob,
+then ahead of him. He snatched up a pitchfork lying across a heap of
+hay, and bolted over the fence to the road again.
+
+Extending the implement, he stood ready to challenge the approaching
+fugitive, and, if possible, turn bruin's course.
+
+Big Bob did not appear to notice Andy until about fifty feet distant
+from him. Then the animal lifted his shaggy head. His eyes glared, his
+collar bristled.
+
+With a deep, menacing roar the bear increased his speed. He headed
+defiantly for the pronged barrier which Andy extended. Big Bob ran
+squarely upon the pitchfork. Its prongs grazed the animal's breast.
+
+Andy experienced a shock. He was forced back, thrown flat, and the next
+minute picked himself up from the shallow ditch at the side of the road
+into which he had fallen.
+
+"Well," commented Andy, staring down the road, "he's a good one!"
+
+Big Bob had never stopped. He was putting ahead for dear life. Andy
+watched him near the farm house.
+
+The animal turned in at a road gateway. He ran rapidly up to an open
+window at the side of the house.
+
+Its sill held something, Andy could not precisely make out what at the
+distance he was from the spot. He fancied, however, that it was dishes
+holding pies or some other food, put out to cool.
+
+Big Bob arose erect on his hind legs, his fore feet rested on the window
+sill. His great muzzle dipped into whatever it held.
+
+At that moment from inside the farmhouse there rang out the most
+curdling yell Andy Wildwood had ever heard.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+A CLEVER RUSE
+
+
+The boy acrobat scrambled up from the roadside ditch, seized the
+pitchfork, and dashed along in the direction Big Bob had taken.
+
+A glance showed the audacious animal still at the window of the
+farmhouse, though now under it.
+
+Bruin had swept the contents of the window sill to the ground with one
+movement of his great paw. He was now discussing the merits of the
+dishes he had dislodged with a crash.
+
+Andy ran around to the other side of the house. From within occasional
+hysterical shrieks issued. They were mingled with distracted sobs. At
+another open window Andy halted.
+
+He could look into a middle apartment crossing the entire house.
+Crouching in a corner was a young woman. Her eyes were fixed in terror
+on the window at which the bear had appeared.
+
+In her arms was a child, crying in affright. An older woman stood at a
+telephone, twisting its call bell handle frantically.
+
+"Don't be afraid," said Andy. "It's a harmless old bear escaped from the
+circus down at the tracks."
+
+The two women regarded him mutely, too scared to believe him. Andy heard
+the telephone bell ring.
+
+"Quick! quick!" cried the woman at the instrument. "Send help. A big
+bear! We'll be devoured alive!"
+
+"No you won't," declared Andy in a shout, making around the house.
+
+He hardly knew what to do next, but he kept his eyes open. He hoped for
+some discovery among the truck littering the yard that would suggest a
+way of getting Big Bob again on the run.
+
+"Capital--the very thing," cried Andy suddenly.
+
+He dropped the pitchfork and whipped out his pocket knife. In two
+seconds he had severed a forty-foot stretch of clothes line running from
+a hook on the house to a post.
+
+Then Andy ran to the kitchen door. Hanging at its side was a big piece
+of raw beef.
+
+It was evidently from an animal recently slaughtered, for it was still
+moist and dripping. Andy tightly secured one end of the clothes line
+about it. He ran to the side of the house.
+
+Big Bob was just finishing a repast on some apple pie. Andy gave the
+meat a fling. It struck the bear in the face. Big Bob raised his head.
+He sniffed and licked his lips. He made an eager, hungry spring for the
+meat, which had rebounded several feet.
+
+"Come on," said Andy, sure now that his bait was a good one, and that
+his experiment would succeed. "I've got you, I guess."
+
+Andy started on a run, paying out the rope. Just as Big Bob was about to
+pounce upon the toothsome spoil, Andy gave it a jerk.
+
+He gauged his rate of progress on a close estimate. Along the trail sped
+bruin. Andy put across the fields.
+
+He heard a bell ring out. Glancing back at the farmhouse, he saw a human
+arm reaching through an open window. It pulled at a rope leading to a
+big alarm bell hanging from the eaves. Looking beyond the farmhouse he
+also saw three or four men in a distant field, summoned by the bell, now
+rushing in its direction.
+
+"I'll get Big Bob beyond the danger line, anyhow," decided Andy. "No,
+you don't!"
+
+The fugitive had pounced fairly on the dragging beef. Andy gave it a
+whirling jerk. Bruin uttered a baffled growl.
+
+"Come on," laughed Andy. "This is jolly fun--if it doesn't end in a
+tragedy."
+
+Andy ran under the bottom rail of a fence. He made time and distance,
+for the bear did not squeeze through so readily. Andy put through a
+brushy reach beyond. Big Bob began to lag. He limped and panted.
+
+"If I can only tucker him out," thought Andy.
+
+He kept up the race for fully half-an-hour. As he reached the edge of a
+boggy stretch, Andy saw, directly beyond, the top of a house poking up
+among a grove of fir trees.
+
+Andy's eyes were everywhere as he neared the building. Its lower part
+was so tightly shuttered and closed up that he decided at once it was an
+empty house.
+
+Getting nearer, however, he discovered that the door at the bottom of
+the stone cellar steps was open. Andy glanced back of him. Big Bob, with
+lolling tongue, was lumbering steadily on his track, perhaps twenty feet
+to the rear.
+
+"I'll try it," determined Andy.
+
+He ran down the steps, halted in the dark cellar, pulled in the meat and
+flung it ahead of him. Then stepping to one side he prepared to act
+promptly when the right moment arrived.
+
+Big Bob came to the steps, cleared them in a spring and ran past Andy.
+The latter dodged outside in a flash. He banged the door shut, shot its
+bolt, sank to the steps and swept his hand over his dripping brow.
+
+"Whew!" panted Andy. "But I've made it."
+
+Andy felt that he had done a pretty clever thing. He had gotten the
+fugitive safely caged behind a stout locked door. The cellar had several
+windows, but they were high up, and too small for Big Bob to ever
+squeeze through.
+
+"I don't believe there is anybody at home," said Andy, getting up to
+investigate. "I'm going to find out. Gracious! I have--there is."
+
+Andy was terribly startled, almost appalled. At just that moment a
+frightful yell rang out. It proceeded from the cellar into which he had
+locked the bear.
+
+A sharp crash followed. Andy, staring spellbound, saw one of the side
+windows of the cellar dashed out.
+
+Through the aperture, immediately following, there clambered a man.
+
+He was hatless, a big red streak crossed his cheek, his coat was in
+ribbons down the back.
+
+White as a sheet, chattering and trembling, he scrambled to his feet,
+gave one affrighted glance back of him, and shot for the road like
+a meteor.
+
+Bang! bang! bang!
+
+"Oh, dear!" cried the distressed Andy. "What's up now?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+A ROYAL REWARD
+
+
+Bang! bang!
+
+Five sharp reports rang out from the cellar. Then came a roar from Big
+Bob. Then a second frantic man appeared at the smashed window.
+
+One sleeve was in ribbons. He carried a smoking pistol. Without ado,
+like his predecessor he ran for the road. Glancing thither, Andy saw the
+two running down it, one after the other, like mad.
+
+Andy hardly knew what to make of it all. The two men did not look like
+farmers. He went around the house, and hammered at the front door. No
+response. Every window on the lower floor was tightly shuttered.
+
+Finally he came back to the smashed window. At first he could see
+nothing much beyond it. Then, his eyes becoming accustomed to the
+darkness, he was able to make out the cellar interior quite clearly.
+
+His anxiety as to Big Bob was immediately relieved. If five bullets had
+been fired at the bear, they had made no more impression than peas from
+a putty blower. The serene old animal was leisurely devouring the juicy
+bait that had lured him to his present prison.
+
+"He's safe for a time, anyhow," decided Andy. "I can't quite make out
+the situation here. It looks to me as if those two men don't exactly fit
+to the premises. They are certainly not farmers, nor tramps. Maybe they
+had sneaked in the cellar for a nap, or to steal, leaving the door open,
+and Big Bob tackled them."
+
+Andy made further unsuccessful efforts to arouse the house. He was sure
+now that there was nobody at home. He sat down on its front steps
+to think.
+
+Finally he noticed that a wire ran from the barb wire fence in front
+into the house.
+
+"They've got a telephone here, as they have at most of these
+farmhouses," he decided. "That ought to help me out. If I could only get
+to the inside."
+
+Andy took another rambling tour about the house. Finally he discovered a
+window an inch or two down from the top in the second story.
+
+His natural aptitude for climbing helped him out. With the aid of a
+lightning rod he soon reached the window, lowered it further, stepped
+into a bedroom, and descended a pair of stairs. Looking around the
+little front hall, he made out a telephone instrument on the
+outside wall.
+
+Andy promptly turned the handle of the call bell. He placed the receiver
+to his ear.
+
+"Hello," came the instantaneous response "this is Central."
+
+"Central--where?" asked Andy.
+
+"Brownville."
+
+"Are you anywhere near the way station where the circus train is
+sidetracked?" inquired Andy.
+
+"Certainly. We're the station town."
+
+"Can you reach any of the circus folks?"
+
+"Reach them?" responded the distant telephone operator animatedly. "The
+woods are full of them. They say the whole menagerie has escaped, and
+they're hunting for the animals everywhere. What do you want?"
+
+"I want to talk with some one connected with the show--and--quick."
+
+"All right I've just got to call to the street. Wait a minute."
+
+Soon a new voice came over the telephone: "Hello."
+
+"Who is that?" asked Andy promptly.
+
+"Brophy."
+
+"Oh, the chief hostler? Say, Mr. Brophy, this is Andy Wildwood."
+
+"The acrobat?--where are you?"
+
+"Tumbler, yes. Listen: I've found and caged Big Bob."
+
+"What's that?--Say, where?"
+
+Even over the wire Andy could discern that the man at the other end of
+the line was manifestly stirred up.
+
+"Let me tell you," spoke Andy. "I've got the animal shut up in a cellar.
+For how long or how safe, I can't tell. You had better tell the trainer,
+and get some people here with the things to secure the bear."
+
+"I'll do it," called back Brophy. "Try and keep those crazy farmers from
+finding him. There's a hundred of them out gunning."
+
+"All right. Listen."
+
+Andy described his present location. He wound up by saying he would stay
+within call--- telephone 26--until the capturing crew put in an
+appearance.
+
+Andy sat down in an easy chair in the hall a good deal satisfied with
+himself. However, he felt a trifle squeamish at the thought of the
+tenant of the premises returning and finding him there.
+
+A growling grunt came to his ears. Andy, tracing it, came to an open
+doorway leading down under the front stairs to the cellar.
+
+This he closed and locked, although he saw that the stairs were too
+crooked and narrow to admit of Big Bob ascending to the upper portion of
+the house.
+
+Andy simply rested. There was no further call on the telephone. Finally
+he arose abruptly to his feet.
+
+The sound of wagon wheels came from the front of the house. A minute
+later footsteps echoed on the steps. A key grated in the front door
+lock. The door swung open.
+
+"Hi--Hello! Who are you?" sang out a brusque, challenging voice.
+
+The minute the newcomer entered the hall his eyes fell on Andy. They
+became filled with dark suspicion. He was a powerfully-built,
+intellectual-looking man. Andy believed he was the proprietor of the
+premises, although he did not resemble a farmer.
+
+This man kicked the door shut behind him. He made a pounce on Andy and
+grabbed his arm.
+
+"Let me explain "--began Andy.
+
+"How did you get in here?" retorted the man, his brow darkening.
+
+"By an open window--I was waiting--"
+
+"Let's have a closer look at you," interrupted the newcomer.
+
+Dragging Andy with him, the speaker threw open the parlor door. That
+room was lighter, but as he crossed its threshold he uttered a
+wild shout.
+
+He stood spellbound, staring about the apartment. Andy stared, too.
+
+The room was in dire disorder. A cabinet had all its drawers out. The
+floor was littered with their former contents.
+
+A stout tin box was overturned, its fastenings were all wrenched apart.
+
+"Robbed!" gasped the man. "Ha, I see--you are a burglar," he continued,
+turning fiercely on the astonished youth.
+
+"Not me," dissented Andy vigorously.
+
+"Yes, you are. All my coins and curios gone! Why, you young thief--"
+
+"Hold on," interrupted Andy, resisting the savage jerk of his captor.
+"Don't you abuse me till you know who I am. Yes, your place has been
+burglarized--I see that, now."
+
+"Oh, do you?" sneered the man. "Thanks."
+
+"Yes, sir. I saw two men come out of the cellar here an hour ago. I
+didn't understand then, but I do now."
+
+"From the cellar? Well, we'll investigate the cellar."
+
+"Better not," advised Andy. "At least, not just yet."
+
+"Well, you're a cool one! Why not?"
+
+"Because there's a bear down there."
+
+"A what?" cried the man, incredulously.
+
+"A bear escaped from the circus. Say, I just thought of it. Have the
+burglars taken much?"
+
+"Oh, you're innocent aren't you?" flared out the man.
+
+"I certainly am," answered Andy calmly.
+
+"Did they take much? My hobby is rare coins. With the missing curios, I
+guess they've got about two thousand dollars' worth."
+
+"Would the stuff make quite a bundle?" asked Andy.
+
+"With the curios--I guess! Five pound candlesticks. Two large silver
+servers. The coins were set on metal squares, and would make bulk
+and weight."
+
+"I have an idea--" began Andy. "No, let me explain first. Please listen,
+sir. You will think differently about me when I tell you my story."
+
+"Go ahead," growled his captor.
+
+Andy recited his chase of the bear and its denouement. Then he added:
+
+"If those two men were the burglars, they got in by way of the cellar.
+They came out through the cellar window. I theorize they came down into
+the cellar with their plunder. They disturbed the bear, and Big Bob went
+for them. When I saw them they were empty-handed. I'll bet they dropped
+their booty in their wild rush for escape."
+
+"Eh? I hope so. Let's find out."
+
+The man appeared to believe Andy. He released his hold on him. Just as
+they came out on the front porch Andy spoke up:
+
+"There are the circus people. They'll soon fix Mr. Bear."
+
+A boxed wagon had driven from the road into the yard. It held six men.
+The chief animal trainer jumped down from the vehicle, followed by the
+head hostler. Four subordinates followed, carrying ropes, muzzles,
+pikes, and one of them a stick having on its end a big round cork filled
+with fine needles.
+
+"I'm glad you've come," said Andy, running forward to meet them. "Big
+Bob is in there," he explained to the trainer, pointing to the cellar.
+
+"You're a good one, Wildwood," commended the trainer in an approving
+tone. "How did you ever work it?"
+
+Andy explained, while the trainer selected a muzzle for the bear and
+armed himself with the needle-pointed device. Then he went to the
+cellar door.
+
+"Shut it quick after me," he said. "Come when I call."
+
+Andy ran around to the broken window as soon as the trainer was inside
+the cellar.
+
+He watched the man approach Big Bob. The bear snarled, made a stand, and
+showed his teeth.
+
+One punch of the needle-pointed device across his nostrils sent him
+bellowing. A second on one ear brought him to the floor. The trainer
+pounced on him and adjusted the muzzle over his head. Then he deftly
+whipped some hobbles on his front paws.
+
+He yelled to his assistants. They hurried into the cellar and soon
+emerged, dragging Big Bob after them.
+
+The owner of the place had stood by watching these proceedings silently.
+While the others dragged the bear to the boxed wagon the trainer
+approached him.
+
+"If there's any bill for damages, just name it," he spoke.
+
+"I'll tell you that mighty soon," answered the man.
+
+He dashed into the cellar and Andy heard him utter a glad shout. He came
+out carrying two old satchels. Throwing them on the ground he
+opened them.
+
+They were filled with coins and curios. The man ran these over eagerly.
+He looked up with a face supremely satisfied.
+
+"Not a cent," he cried heartily. "No, no--no damages. Glad to have
+served you."
+
+"All right. Come on, Wildwood," said the trainer, starting for the
+wagon.
+
+"One minute," interrupted the owner of the place, beckoning to Andy.
+
+He drew out his wallet, fingered over some bank bills, selected one, and
+grasped Andy's hand warmly.
+
+"You have done me a vast service," he declared. "But for you--"
+
+"And the bear," suggested Andy, with a smile.
+
+"All right," nodded the man, "only, the bear can't spend money. You can.
+I misjudged you. Let me make it right. Take that."
+
+He released his grasp of Andy's hand momentarily, to slap into his palm
+a banknote.
+
+"Now, look here--" began Andy, modestly.
+
+"No, you look there!" cried the man, pushing Andy towards the wagon.
+"Good bye and good luck."
+
+Andy ran and jumped to the top of the wagon, which had just started up.
+
+Settling himself comfortably, he took a look at the banknote. His eyes
+started, and a flush of surprise crossed his face.
+
+It was a fifty dollar bill.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+"HEY, RUBE!"
+
+
+"From bad to worse," said the Man With the Iron Jaw.
+
+"Correct, Marco," assented Billy Blow dejectedly.
+
+It was three weeks after the start of the southern tour of the circus.
+
+Marco, the clown, Midget, Miss Stella Starr, Andy and about a dozen
+others were seated or strolling around the performers' tent about the
+middle of the afternoon.
+
+Every face in the crowd looked anxious--some disheartened and desperate.
+
+Bad luck attended the southern trip of the show. They had reached
+Montgomery in the midst of a terrific rain storm. Two animal cars had
+been derailed and wrecked on the route.
+
+Three days later a wind storm nearly tore the main top to tatters. Some
+of the performers fell sick, due to the change of climate. Others
+foresaw trouble, and joined other shows in the north.
+
+The season started out badly and kept it up. The attendance as they left
+the big cities was disastrously light.
+
+They had to cut out one or two towns here and there, on account of bad
+roads and accidents. Now the show had reached Lacon, and after more
+trouble found itself stalled.
+
+To be "stalled," Andy had learned was to be very nearly stranded. No
+salaries had been paid for a full fortnight. Some of the performers had
+gotten out executions against the show.
+
+Aside from this, on account of the absence of many attractions
+advertised in the show bills, disappointed audiences were showing an
+ugly spirit.
+
+The show was tied up by local creditors, who would not allow it to leave
+town until their bills were paid.
+
+To make matters worse, Sim Dewey, the treasurer of the show, had run
+away with eleven thousand dollars two days before.
+
+This comprised the active capital of the show. Not a trace of the
+whereabouts of the mean thief had been discovered.
+
+All these facts were known to the performers, and over the same they
+were brooding that dismal rainy afternoon, awaiting the coming of
+the manager.
+
+"Here he is," spoke an eager voice, and Mr. Scripps bustled into the
+tent.
+
+He rubbed his hands briskly and smiled at everybody, but Andy saw that
+this was all put on. Lines of care and anxiety showed about the plucky
+manager's eyes and lips.
+
+"Well, my friends," he spoke at once. "We've arrived at a decision."
+
+"Good," commented Marco. "Let's have it."
+
+"I have had a talk with the lawyers who hold the executions against the
+show, I have suggested four nights and two matinees at half-price,
+papering four counties liberally. We'll announce only the attractions we
+really have, so there can be no kicking. What is taken in the treasurer
+is to hand over to the sheriff. He is to pay fifty per cent on claims
+against us. The balance, minus expenses, is to go for salaries. I should
+say that we can pay each performer a full half salary. There's the
+situation, friends. What do you say?"
+
+"Satisfactory," nodded Marco.
+
+"Billy Blow?"
+
+"I've got pretty heavy expenses, with a wife in the hospital," said the
+clown in a subdued tone, "but I'll try and make half salary do."
+
+"Miss Starr?"
+
+The kind-hearted equestrienne smiled brightly.
+
+"Take care of the others first, Mr. Scripps," she said. "While I have
+these, we won't exactly starve."
+
+Miss Stella Starr shook the glittering diamond pendants in her pretty
+pink ears.
+
+"Thank you," bowed the manager, choking up a trifle. "Andy Wildwood?"
+
+"I'm a mere speck in the show," said Andy, "but I'll stick if there
+isn't a cent of salary. It's the last ditch for my good, true friends,
+Mr. Scripps."
+
+The manager turned aside to hide his emotion.
+
+"Friends," he resumed an instant later, "you break me all up with this
+kind of talk. You're a royal, good lot. I've wired Mr. Harding that he
+must help us out. Stick to your posts, and no one shall lose a dollar."
+
+There was not a dissent to his proposition as he completed calling the
+list of performers. Andy's action shamed some into coming into the
+arrangements. The manager's words encouraged others. While some few
+answered grudgingly, the compact was made unanimous.
+
+"There's a crowd of hard roughs trying to make trouble," concluded Mr.
+Scripps. "Leave that to the tent men. Give the best show you know how,
+try and please the crowds, and I guess we'll win out."
+
+Every act went excellently at the evening performance up to about the
+middle of the programme.
+
+Andy did his level best. He won an encore by a trick somersault old
+Benares had taught him.
+
+Billy Blow was at his funniest. He had the audience in fine, good humor.
+Little Midget over-exerted himself to follow in his father's lead.
+
+Marco was a pronounced success. Miss Stella Starr made one of her horses
+dance a graceful round to the tune of "Dixie," and the audience
+went wild.
+
+Andy, in street dress, came into the canvas passageway near the
+orchestra as the trick elephants were led into the ring. The manager
+nodded to him. Andy saw that he was pleased the way things were going.
+
+For all that, he observed that Mr. Scripps kept his eye pretty closely
+on a rough crowd occupying seats near the entrance.
+
+They seemed to be of a general group. They talked loudly and passed all
+kinds of comments on the various acts.
+
+Finally one of their number shied a carrot into the ring, striking the
+elephant trainer.
+
+The latter caught his cue instantly at a word from the ringmaster. He
+picked up the vegetable, made a profound bow to the sender, juggled it
+cleverly with his training wand, one-two-three, and turned the tables
+completely as the smart baby elephant caught it on the fly.
+
+Cat calls rang out derisively from a lot of boys, directed at the group
+of rowdies from the midst of whom the carrot had been thrown.
+
+Then a man arose unsteadily from that mob and stumbled over the ring
+ropes.
+
+The ringmaster, his face very stern and very white, stepped forward to
+intercept him.
+
+"What do you want?" he demanded.
+
+"Man insulted me. Going to lick him," hiccoughed the rowdy, his eyes
+fixed on the elephant trainer.
+
+"Leave the ring," ordered the ringmaster.
+
+"Me? Guess not! Will I, boys?" he demanded of his special crowd of
+cronies.
+
+"No, no! Go on! Have it out!"
+
+A good many timid ones arose from their seats. The ringmaster scented
+trouble.
+
+Stepping squarely up to the drunken loafer, his hand shot out in a flash
+and caught the fellow squarely under the jaw. He knocked him five feet
+across the ropes, where he landed like a clod of earth in a heap.
+
+Instantly there was an uproar. The orchestra stopped playing. The
+manager ran forward and put up his hand.
+
+"We will have order here at any cost," he shouted. "Officer," to the
+guard at the entrance, "call the police."
+
+With wild yells some fifty of the group from which the drunken rowdy had
+come sprang from the benches. They jumped over the ropes, crowding into
+the ring and making for the manager.
+
+Half-a-dozen ring men ran forward to repel them. Fists brandished, and
+cudgels, too. The circus men went down among flying heels.
+
+Then arose a cry, heard for the first time by the excited Andy--never
+later recalled without a thrill as he realized from that experience its
+terrific portent.
+
+"_Hey, Rube_!"
+
+It was the world-wide rallying cry of the circus folk--the call in
+distress for speedy, reliant help.
+
+As if by magic the echoes took up the call. Andy heard them respond from
+the farthest haunts of the circus grounds.
+
+From under the benches, through the main entrance, under the loose side
+flaps, a rallying army sprang into being.
+
+Stake men, wagon men, cooks, hostlers, candy butchers, came flying from
+every direction.
+
+Every one of them had found a weapon--a stake. Like skilled soldiers
+they grouped, and bore down on the intruders like an avalanche.
+
+Women were shrieking, fainting on the benches, children were crying. The
+audience was in a wild turmoil. Some benches broke down. The scene was
+one of riotous confusion.
+
+Suddenly a shot rang out. Then Andy had a final sight of crashing clubs
+and mad, bleeding faces, as some one pulled the centre-light rope. The
+big chandelier came down with a crash, precipitating the tent in
+semi-darkness.
+
+So excited was Andy, that, grasping a stake, he was about to dash into
+the midst of the conflict. The manager pushed him back.
+
+"Get out of this," he ordered quickly. "Look to the women and children.
+Our men will see to it that those low loafers get all they came for."
+
+"Wildwood," spoke Marco rushing up to Andy just here, "they have cut the
+guy ropes of the performers' tent. I must get to my family. Look out for
+Miss Starr. Here she is."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+A FREE TROLLEY RIDE
+
+
+The young acrobat turned in time to see the performers' tent wobble
+inwards. Miss Starr, quite flustered, ran rapidly to escape being caught
+in its drooping folds.
+
+Following her, looking worn out and anxious, carrying Midget in his
+arms, was Billy Blow.
+
+"Get them out of this!" cried Marco, holding up the flap of the canvas
+passage way.
+
+"Here, let me take him," directed Andy. "You're not equal to the heavy
+load."
+
+He removed Midget from the clown's arms, and led the way to the outer
+air.
+
+Yells and shots sounded from the main tent. Outside there was a swaying,
+excited mob. Andy evaded them, leading the way to the street lining the
+circus grounds at one side.
+
+"Look there," suddenly exclaimed the clown in a gasping tone.
+
+The main tent was on fire. A mob was trying to pull down the menagerie
+tent.
+
+"Hi!" yelled the leader of a gang of boys rushing past them and halting,
+"here's some show folks."
+
+"Pelt them!" cried another voice. "They won't pay my father his feed
+bill."
+
+An egg flittered towards the fugitives. It struck Miss Starr on the
+back, soiling her pretty dress.
+
+Andy ran back, Midget held on one arm. He let drive with his free hand
+and knocked the egg thrower head over heels.
+
+This was the signal for a wild riot. The crowd of young hoodlums pressed
+close on Andy, and he retreated to the others.
+
+"Take him, Miss Starr," he said quickly, placing Midget in her arms.
+"Hurry to the lighted street yonder."
+
+A rain of stones came towards them. Andy ran back at the crowd. In turn
+he sent four of them reeling with vigorous fisticuffs. Then he rejoined
+his friends.
+
+A trolley car stood at one side of the street. The boys had yelled for
+help from others of their kind and their numbers increased dangerously.
+The motorman of the trolley car had neglected his duty and joined a
+gaping crowd at a corner. Riot and enmity to the circus people was in
+the air. Andy formed a speedy decision.
+
+"Quick!" he ordered, "get into that car."
+
+A brickbat knocked off his hat. A second smashed a window in the car as
+Miss Starr and the others got aboard.
+
+Two big fellows pounced upon Andy. He met one with a blow that laid him
+flat. With a trick leap he landed his feet against the stomach of the
+other, sending him reeling back, breathless.
+
+Andy made a jump over the front railing of the car. Another deluge of
+missiles struck the car. He noticed that his friends were safely aboard.
+Andy noticed, too, that the crank handle of the motor box was in place.
+
+"Anywhere for safety from that mob," he thought.
+
+Grr-rr-whiz-z! The car started up. Shouts, missiles, running forms
+pursued it. Andy stopped for nothing. He put on full speed.
+
+As he turned a sharp corner, Andy caught sight of a mass of light flames
+shooting upward. A crowd was in pursuit of the car. Shouts, shots and
+the roars of the animals in the menagerie caused a wild din. His
+inclinations lured him back to the scene of the excitement. His duty,
+however, seemed plain; to follow out Marco's instructions and convey his
+charges to a place of safety.
+
+At a cross street some one hailed the car. Andy simply shot ahead the
+faster. Soon they reached the limits of the town. Andy bent his ear, and
+caught the distant clang of the trolley wagon.
+
+He had stolen a car, and they were in pursuit. The general temper was
+adverse to the circus folks. Andy kept the car going.
+
+Miss Starr came to the front door of the car and stepped out on the
+platform beside Andy.
+
+"Brave boy," she said simply.
+
+"Miss Starr, what are your plans?" he asked.
+
+"Anything to get away from this horrid town," she said. "I am not afraid
+but what our tent men will teach that mob a lesson. They always do, in
+these riots. I have seen a dozen of them in my time. The police, too,
+will finally restore order. As to the show, though--the southern trip
+is over."
+
+"Then you don't want to go back to Lacon?"
+
+"Why should we? Our traps are probably burned, or stolen. If not, they
+will be sent on to us on direction. The show can't possibly survive.
+Billy and his boy couldn't stand the strain of any more trouble. No,"
+sighed the equestrienne, "it is plain that we must seek another
+position."
+
+Andy again heard the gong of the repair wagon. He thought fast. Putting
+on renewed speed, he never halted until they had covered about four
+miles. Here was a little cluster of houses. He stopped the car.
+
+"Come with me, quick," he directed his friends, entering the car and
+taking up Midget in his arms.
+
+Andy had been over this territory the day previous doing some exigency
+bill-posting service.
+
+He led the way down a quiet street. After walking about four squares
+they reached railroad tracks and a little station. This was locked up
+and dark within. On the platform, however, was a box ready for shipment,
+with a red lantern beside it.
+
+"I hope a train comes soon," thought Andy quite anxiously, as he caught
+the echo of the repair wagon gong nearer than before.
+
+"There's a whistle," said little Midget.
+
+"That's so," responded Andy, bending his ear. "Going north, too. I hope
+it's a train and I hope it comes along in time."
+
+"In time for what?" inquired Midget.
+
+Andy did not reply. He could estimate the progress of the pursuing wagon
+from gong sounds and shouts in the distance. He traced its halt,
+apparently at the stranded car. Then the gong sounded again.
+
+Andy glanced down the street they had come. Two flashing, wobbling
+lights gleamed in the distance, headed in the direction of the
+railway station.
+
+"They've guessed us out," said Andy. "Of course they can only delay us,
+but that counts just now. If the train--"
+
+"She's coming!" sang out Midget in a nervous, high-pitched voice.
+
+Andy's nerves were on a severe strain. A locomotive rounded a curve. The
+trolley wagon was still a quarter-of-a-mile distant.
+
+The engine slowed down to a stop, the repair rig with flying horses
+attached less than a square away.
+
+The baggage coach door opened. A man jumped out and started to put the
+box aboard.
+
+"Hold on--through train," he yelled at Andy.
+
+"That's all right. Quick, get aboard," he urged his companions.
+
+Andy glanced from the windows of the coach they entered as the train
+started up with a jerk.
+
+He saw the trolley wagon dash up to the platform. A police officer and
+some company men jumped off.
+
+"Just in time," murmured Andy with satisfaction, as the station flashed
+from view.
+
+The coach was nearly empty. He found a double seat. Miss Starr uttered a
+great sigh of relief. Poor Billy Blow sank down, thoroughly tired out.
+Midget laughed.
+
+"I hope it's a long ride," he said.
+
+"I'm afraid," spoke Miss Starr, "it won't be, Midge. See," and she
+opened a little purse, showing only a few silver coins. "I have some
+money in a bank in New York, but that does not help us at the
+present moment."
+
+"I sent all I had to my poor wife," announced the clown dejectedly.
+
+"That's all right," broke in Andy cheerily. "Here's a route list," and
+he picked up a timetable from the next seat. "Can you tell me where this
+train is bound for?" he inquired politely of a gentleman occupying the
+opposite seat.
+
+"Baltimore."
+
+"That sounds good," said Miss Starr. "There was a show there last week.
+The season's broken, we can't hope for a star engagement, but we might
+get in for a few weeks."
+
+"I haven't the money to chase up situations all over the country,"
+lamented the clown.
+
+"Don't worry on that score," put in Andy briskly. "You people find out
+where you want to go. I'll take care of the bills."
+
+"You, Andy?" spoke Miss Starr, with a stare.
+
+"Yes, ma'am. You see, I've got my savings--"
+
+"Ho! ho!" laughed Billy Blow bitterly. "Savings! Out of what? You
+haven't drawn one week's full salary since you joined us."
+
+"Remember the needle and thread you loaned me on the train when we were
+going south, Miss Starr?" asked Andy.
+
+"Why, yes, I think I do," nodded the equestrienne.
+
+"Well, I wanted it to sew up a fifty dollar bill for safe-keeping. Here
+it is."
+
+Andy with his knife ripped open a fob pocket and produced the bank note
+in question.
+
+"Our common fund," he cried, waving it gaily. "Mr. Blow, designate your
+terminus. We'll not be put off the train, while this lasts."
+
+Billy Blow choked up. He directed one grateful glance at Andy. Then he
+snuggled Midget close, and hid his face against him.
+
+Miss Starr put a trembling hand on Andy's arm. A bright tear sparkled in
+her eye.
+
+"Good as gold!" she said softly, "and true blue to the core!"
+
+"Thank you. I think I'll get a drink of water," said Andy, covering his
+own emotion at this display of others by a subterfuge.
+
+He went to the end of the car. At the moment he put out his hand for the
+glass under the water tank, a person from a near seat put out his also.
+
+"Excuse me," said Andy, as they joggled.
+
+"Certainly--you first," responded a pleasant voice.
+
+"Hello!" almost shouted Andy Wildwood, starting as if from an electric
+shock. "Why, Luke Belding!"
+
+"Eh? Aha! Andy Wildwood. Well! well! well!"
+
+It was the ambitious lion tamer of Tipton--Luke the show boy, the owner
+of the famous chicken that walked backwards.
+
+They shook hands with shining faces, forgetting the water, genuinely
+glad at the unexpected reunion.
+
+"What are you ever doing here?" asked Andy.
+
+"Me?" responded Luke, drawing himself up in mock dignity, yet withal a
+pleased pride in his eye. "Well, Wildwood, to tell you the truth I've
+got up in the world."
+
+"Glad of it."
+
+"And I am on my way to join the Greatest Show on Earth."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+WITH THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH
+
+
+"The Greatest Show On Earth?" repeated Andy wonderingly. "You don't
+mean--"
+
+"I do mean," nodded Luke vigorously. "The one--the only. Is there more
+than one? I'm on my way to join it."
+
+"You're lucky," commented Andy.
+
+"And ambitious, and tickled to death!" cried Luke effusively. "My! When
+I think of it, I imagine I'm dreaming. And say--I'm a capitalist."
+
+"Well!" smiled Andy.
+
+"Yes, sir--see?" and Luke spun round, exhibiting his neat apparel. "I'm
+an independent gentleman."
+
+"You do look prosperous," admitted Andy.
+
+"Living on my royalties."
+
+"Royalties? How's that?"
+
+"You remember the chicken?"
+
+"That walked backwards. I'll never forget it."
+
+"Well, sir," asserted Luke, "it took. When we left you, we struck a
+brisk show. Big business and the chicken a winner from the start.
+Another side showman offered me a big salary, and my boss got worried.
+He agreed to pay me ten per cent gross receipts for Bolivar. I knew he
+had a brother who was chief animal trainer with the Big Show. I took him
+up on condition that he got me a place there. He wrote to his brother,
+and I'm his assistant. On my way to Baltimore now. The show is on its
+way through Delaware."
+
+"Wait here a minute," spoke Andy, and he went back to his friends.
+
+Andy told them of meeting Luke, and the whereabouts of the Big Show.
+Just then the conductor came into the car, and they had to make a
+rapid decision.
+
+"Let us get to Baltimore, anyway," suggested the clown. "It's nearer
+home--and my wife."
+
+Andy paid their fares. Miss Starr briefly told the conductor of their
+mishaps at Lacon. Her eloquent, sympathetic eyes won Midget a free ride.
+
+Andy got pillows for his three friends, and some coffee and pie from the
+adjoining buffet car.
+
+He saw them comfortably disposed of for the night; and then went back to
+Luke.
+
+They sat down close together, two pleased, jolly friends. Andy
+interested Luke immensely by reciting his vivid experiences since they
+had parted.
+
+"By the way, Luke," he observed at last, "there's something I missed
+hearing from you at Tipton. Remember?"
+
+"Let's see," said Luke musingly. "Oh, yes--you mean about your being an
+heir?"
+
+"That's it."
+
+Luke became animated at once.
+
+"I've often thought about that," he said. "You know I was all struck of
+a heap when you first told me your name!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And asked if you was Andy Wildwood, the heir? Do you remember?"
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"Well, it was funny, but early on the day I came to the circus I was
+tramping it along a creek. About three miles out of town I should think,
+I lay down to rest among some bushes. Ten minutes after I'd got there a
+boat rowed by some persons came along. They beached it right alongside
+the brush. Then one of them, a boy, lifted a mail bag from the bottom of
+the skiff."
+
+"A mail bag--- a boy?" repeated Andy, with a start of intelligence. "Did
+you hear his name?"
+
+"Yes, in a talk that followed. The man with him called him Jim."
+
+"Jim Tapp," murmured Andy.
+
+"He called the man Murdock."
+
+"I thought so," Andy said to himself. "They put up that mail robbery."
+
+"They cut open the bag and took out a lot of letters," continued Luke.
+"A few of them had money in them. This they pocketed, tearing up the
+letters and throwing them into the creek. There was one letter the boy
+kept. He read it over and over. When they had got through with the
+letters, he said to the man that it was funny."
+
+"What was funny?" asked Andy.
+
+"Why, he said there was a letter putting him on to 'a big spec.,' as he
+called it. He said the letter told about a secret, about a fortune the
+writer had discovered. He said the letter was to a boy who would never
+know his good luck if they didn't tell him. He said to the man there was
+something to think over. He chuckled as he bragged how they would make a
+big stake juggling the fortune of the heir, Andy Wildwood."
+
+"I don't understand it at all," said Andy, "but it is a singular story,
+for a fact."
+
+"Well, that's all I know about it. The minute I heard your name, of
+course I recalled where I had heard it before."
+
+"Of course," nodded Andy thoughtfully.
+
+After that the conversation lagged. Luke soon fell asleep. For over two
+hours, however, Andy kept trying to figure out how he could possibly be
+an heir, who had written the letter, and to whom it had been addressed.
+
+The next day they arrived at Baltimore. A morning paper contained a
+dispatch from Lacon.
+
+The circus men had nearly killed half-a-dozen of the mob of roughs. The
+police had restored order, but fire and riot had put the show out
+of business.
+
+Miss Starr wired to the town in Delaware where the Big Show was playing.
+Luke had gone on to join it. By noon she received a satisfactory reply.
+Then she telegraphed to Lacon about their traps, directing the manager
+where to send them.
+
+That evening, after a long talk over their prospects, the four refugees
+took the train for Dover.
+
+The next morning Miss Starr, Billy, Midget and Andy went to the
+headquarters of The Biggest Show on Earth.
+
+Andy had a chance to inspect it while waiting for Bob Sanderson, the
+assistant manager, who was a distant relative of Miss Stella Starr.
+
+Its mammoth proportions fairly staggered him. Its details were
+bewildering in their system and perfection. Alongside of it, the circus
+he had recently belonged to was merely a side show.
+
+Sanderson was a brisk, business-like fellow. He soon settled on an
+engagement for Miss Starr and Billy and Midget for the rest of
+the season.
+
+"I don't think I can use the boy, though," he said, glancing at Andy.
+
+"Then you can't have us," said the equestrienne promptly. "Bob, you and
+I are old friends, but not better ones than myself and Andy Wildwood. He
+stood by us through thick and thin, he makes a good showing in the ring.
+Why, before the Benares Brothers left us, they were training him for one
+of the best acts ever done on the trapeze."
+
+"Is that so?" spoke Sanderson, looking interested. "The Benares Brothers
+joined us only last week. Here, give me five minutes."
+
+"Miss Starr, you mustn't let me stand in your way of a good engagement,"
+said Andy, as the assistant manager left the tent.
+
+"It's the four of us, or none," asserted the determined little lady.
+
+Sanderson came bustling in at the end of five minutes.
+
+"All right," he announced brusquely, "I'll take the boy on."
+
+"You'll never regret it," declared Stella Starr positively.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+"Bravo!"
+
+"Clever!"
+
+Amid deafening applause, old Benares and Thacher retired from the
+sawdust ring, bowing profusely with a deep sense of pride and
+satisfaction.
+
+Between them, hands joined in the group of three, Andy Wildwood imitated
+their graceful acknowledgment of the plaudits of the vast concourse in
+the great metropolitan amphitheatre.
+
+"Wildwood," declared Thacher, as they backed towards the performers'
+room, "you've made a hit."
+
+"It is so!" cried old Benares, with sparkling eyes. "We are a three
+now--The Three Benares Brothers."
+
+Andy was dizzy with exultation and delight. It was the first night of
+the Biggest Show on Earth in New York City.
+
+For a week he had been in training for the fantastic trapeze act which
+had won thunders of approbation.
+
+The Benares Brothers had appeared in the amphitheatre dome on a double
+trapeze.
+
+After several clever specialties, the ringmaster suddenly stepped
+forward. He lifted his hand. The orchestra stopped playing.
+
+Raising a pistol, the ringmaster directed it aloft. Bang! Crash! went
+the orchestra, and from a box suspended over the trapezes the bottom
+suddenly dropped out.
+
+Following, an agile youthful form shot down through space. Quick as
+lightning the Benares Brothers swung by their feet, joined hands in
+mid-air, and the descending form--Andy Wildwood--catching at the wrists
+of Thacher, was swung back in a twenty foot circle. Crash! again the
+orchestra. Andy was flung through space across to old Benares, a
+plaything in mid-air, Benares catching at the feet of Thacher, Andy
+tailing on in a graceful descent, thrilling the delighted audience.
+
+The act was not so difficult, but it was neat, rapid, unique. Andy
+Wildwood felt that at last he was a full-fledged acrobat.
+
+The manager came back to compliment him. Billy Blow looked delighted.
+Miss Stella Starr said:
+
+"Andy, we are all proud of you."
+
+The next morning's papers gave him special notice. Luke Belding
+whispered to him to demand double salary.
+
+Andy walked from his boarding house the next morning feeling certain
+that he had made very substantial progress during his sixty days of
+circus life.
+
+He was passing a row of houses on a side street when a cab drove up to
+the curb. Andy casually glanced at the passenger as he crossed the
+sidewalk. Then he gave a great start.
+
+"It can't be!" he ejaculated. Then he added instantly: "Yes, I'd know
+him among a thousand--Sim Dewey."
+
+The man entered an open doorway, and Andy ran after him. He heard the
+fellow ascend a pair of stairs and knock at a door.
+
+"Oh, good morning, Mr. Vernon."
+
+"Gracious!" exclaimed Andy--"Aunt Lavinia!"
+
+Here was a stirring situation. There could be no mistake. Despite a
+false moustache and a pair of dark eyeglasses, Andy had recognized the
+defaulting cashier of the disbanded circus. Beyond dispute he had
+recognized the welcoming tones above as belonging to his aunt, Miss
+Lavinia Talcott.
+
+"It's like dreaming," mused Andy. "All this happening together, and here
+in New York City! Why, what ever brought Aunt Lavinia here? Where did
+she ever get acquainted with that scamp?"
+
+Andy felt that he had an urgent duty to perform. Here was a mystery to
+explore, a villain to capture.
+
+He went softly up the stairs. The place was a respectable boarding
+house, he concluded. Stealing softly past a door, he went half-way up a
+second pair of stairs.
+
+Not five feet away from an open transom, Andy could now look into a room
+containing three persons.
+
+A motherly, dignified old woman sat in a big arm chair. Near her was
+Andy's aunt, smiling and simpering up at Dewey. The latter, dressed "to
+kill," was bowing like a French dancing master.
+
+Dewey sat down. The chaperone, who seemed to be the landlady, did not
+engage in a brief conversation that ensued within the room.
+
+At its conclusion Andy saw his aunt hand Dewey a folded piece of paper.
+The defaulting circus cashier gallantly bowed over her extended hand and
+came out of the room.
+
+"Hold on, Mr. Sim Dewey," spoke Andy, down the stairs in a flash, and
+seizing Dewey's arm on the landing.
+
+"Eh? Hello--Wildwood!"
+
+"Yes, it's me," said Andy. "A word with you, sir, as to what business
+you have with my aunt. Then--the stolen eleven thousand dollars, if
+you please."
+
+Dewey had turned deadly white. He glared desperately at Andy, and tried
+to wrench his arm free.
+
+"Shall I arouse the street?" demanded Andy sternly. "It's jail for
+you--"
+
+Crack! The treacherous Dewey had slipped one hand behind him. He had
+drawn a slung shot from his pocket. It struck Andy's head, and he went
+down with a sense of sickening giddiness.
+
+"Stop him!" shouted Andy, half-blinded, crawling across the landing.
+
+Dewey made a leap of four steps at a time.
+
+"Out of my way!" he yelled at some obstacle.
+
+"Hold on, mister!"
+
+Andy arose to his feet with difficulty. He clung to the banister,
+descending the stairs as a frightful clatter rang out.
+
+A boy about his own age, coming up the stairs, had collided with Dewey.
+Both tripped up and rolled to the front entry.
+
+The boy got up, unhurt. Dewey, groaning, half-arose, fell back, and lay
+prostrate, one limb bent up under him.
+
+Andy was still weak and dizzy-headed, but he acted promptly for the
+occasion.
+
+He saw that Dewey had broken a limb, and was practically helpless. He
+glanced out at the driver of the cab. He was an honest-faced old fellow.
+Andy ran out to him and spoke a few quick words.
+
+With Dewey writhing, moaning and resisting, this man, Andy and the
+strange boy carried him to the cab. Andy directed the boy to get up with
+the driver, He got inside the cab with Dewey.
+
+A hysterical shriek rang out at the street doorway. Andy saw his aunt
+wildly wringing her hands. The maiden lady was held back from pursuing
+the cab by the landlady.
+
+Within ten minutes the cab delivered Dewey at a police station, and Andy
+told his story to the precinct captain.
+
+They found in a secret pocket on the defaulting cashier certificates of
+deposit to the amount of ten thousand dollars, issued in a false name.
+The amount was a part of the stolen circus funds.
+
+In another pocket was discovered a draft for three thousand dollars,
+made over to the same false name by Miss Lavinia Talcott on the bank
+at Fairview.
+
+The police at once locked the prisoner up in a cell, sent for a surgeon,
+and asked Andy to telegraph to Mr. Giles Harding, the circus owner,
+at once.
+
+When Andy came out of the police station, he found the boy who had
+assisted him waiting for him.
+
+He was a bright-faced, pleasant-mannered lad, but his appearance
+suggested hard luck.
+
+Andy gave him a dollar, and got his name. It was Mark Hadley. Andy was
+at once interested when the boy told him that his dead father had been a
+professional sleight-of-hand man in the west.
+
+Mark Hadley had come to New York on the track of an old circus friend of
+his father. This man, it turned out, was a relative of Dewey,
+masquerading now under the name of Vernon.
+
+The man had told him that Dewey could help him out. He did not know
+where Dewey was living, but understood he was about to marry a lady
+living at the boarding house where Mark had gone, to meet the fellow in
+a most sensational manner, indeed.
+
+Andy invited Mark to call upon him later in the day, gave the youth his
+present address, and proceeded back to the boarding house to find
+his aunt.
+
+The hour that followed was one of the strangest in Andy's life.
+
+There were reproaches, threats, cajolings, until Andy found out the true
+state of affairs.
+
+It was only after he had proven to his humiliated and chagrined aunt
+that Dewey was a villain, that Miss Lavinia broke down and confessed
+that she had been a silly, sentimental woman.
+
+It seemed that the letter Jim Tapp and Murdock had secured was from Mr.
+Graham, back at Fairview.
+
+Graham had discovered in a secret bottom of the box Andy had left with
+him, a paper referring to a patent of Andy's father.
+
+As time had brought about, this paper entitled the heirs of the old
+inventor to quite large royalties on a new electrical device which had
+come into practical use after Mr. Wildwood's death.
+
+The plotters had gone at once to Miss Lavinia. Her cupidity was aroused.
+She quieted her conscience by giving Andy ten dollars at Tipton, and
+deciding to take charge of the royalty money "till he was of age."
+
+This was her story, told amid contrite tears and shame as Andy proved to
+her that Dewey was after her three thousand dollars, and would have
+escaped with it only for his decisive action.
+
+Murdock had introduced her to Dewey. The latter had pretended to be in
+love with her, had promised to marry her, and that day had induced the
+weak, silly old spinster to trust him with her little fortune.
+
+"I have been a wicked woman!" Miss Lavinia declared. "I will make
+amends, Andy. You shall have your rights. Come home with me."
+
+"Not till my engagement is over, aunt," replied Andy, "and then only for
+a visit, if you wish it. I love the circus life, and I seem to find just
+as many chances there to be good and to do good as in any other
+vocation."
+
+Miss Lavinia was given back her three thousand dollars the next day, and
+Sim Dewey was sent to prison on a long term.
+
+Mr. Harding came on to the city the following day. He recovered all
+except a trifle of the stolen circus money. That evening he sent a
+sealed envelope by special messenger to Andy. It contained five one
+hundred dollar bills--Andy's reward for capturing the embezzling
+circus cashier.
+
+The next afternoon Andy invited five of his special friends and several
+of his acquaintances to a little dinner party.
+
+Miss Starr, Billy Blow the clown, Midget, old Benares, Thacher, Luke
+Belding and Mark Hadley were his guests of honor.
+
+Andy had found a starting place in the circus for Mark, whose ambition
+was to become a great magician.
+
+They were a merry, friendly party. They jollied one another. They saw
+nothing but sunshine in the sawdust pathway before them.
+
+"You are a grand genius!" declared old Benares to Andy. "My friends, one
+thought: in six weeks up from Andy the school boy, to Andy the acrobat."
+
+"Hold on now, Mr. Benares," cried Andy, smilingly. "That was because of
+my royal, good friends like you."
+
+"And your own grit," said Marco. "You assuredly deserve your success."
+
+And the other circus people agreed with Marco.
+
+For the time being Andy heard nothing more of Tapp, Murdock and Daley.
+The days passed pleasantly enough. He did his work faithfully,
+constantly adding to his fame as an acrobat.
+
+Between Andy and Luke Belding a warm friendship sprang up. Luke had much
+to tell about himself. As time passed the lad who loved animals had many
+adventures, but what these were I must reserve for another volume, to be
+named, "Luke the Lion Tamer; or, On the Road with a Great Menagerie," In
+that we shall not only follow brave-hearted Luke but also Andy, and see
+what the future held in store for the boy acrobat.
+
+"Andy, are you glad you joined the circus?" questioned Luke, one day,
+after a particularly brilliant performance in the ring.
+
+"Glad doesn't express it," was the quick answer. "Why, it seems to be
+just what I was cut out for."
+
+"I really believe you. You never make work of an act--like some of the
+acrobats."
+
+"It must be in my blood," said Andy, with a bright smile. "Anyway, I
+expect to be Andy the Acrobat for a long while to come."
+
+And he was.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Andy the Acrobat, by Peter T. Harkness
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