Chapter L: C. Page & Company (2)

NO matter what kind of a procession paraded the streets of Gentryville, one unique tailpiece always brought up the rear. As the music of the band died away in the distance, and the pomp of the pageant dwindled down to the last straggling end, necks about to be relieved of their long tension invariably turned for one more look. It was then that old Gid Wiggan drove by in his Wild-cat Liniment wagon, as unfailing as the Z that ends the alphabet.

Lank and stoop-shouldered, with a long, thin beard that reached his lap, and a high, bell-crowned hat pulled down to meet his flabby, protruding ears, he of himself was enough to provoke a laugh; but added to this he bore aloft on a pole the insignia that proclaimed his calling. It was a stuffed wild-cat, shelf-worn and weather-beaten, glaring with primeval fierceness with its one glass eye, and wearing a ridiculously meek expression on the side that had been bereft.

Across the ribs of the old black horse that drew the wagon was painted in white letters, "Wiggan's Wild-cat Liniment;" but as if this were not advertisement enough, the proprietor sowed little handbills through the crowd, guaranteeing that the liniment (made from the fat of the animal) would cure any ache in the whole category of human ills. He had followed in the wake of the Gentryville processions so many years that he had come to be regarded as much a matter of course as the drum-major or the clown. Civic or military, the occasion made no difference. He followed a circus as impartially as he came after the troops reviewing before the Governor's stand, and he had been known to follow even one lone band-wagon through the town, on its mission of advertising a minstrel troupe.

There must have been something in the geography of the Wiggan family corresponding to a water-shed, else his course in life could not have differed so widely from his brother's. They had drifted as far apart as twin raindrops, fated to find an outlet in opposite seas. Indeed, so great was the difference that the daughters of the Hon. Joseph Churchill Wiggan (distinct accent on the last syllable when referring to them) scarcely felt it incumbent upon them to give his brother Gideon the title of uncle.

To Louise and Maud the proper accentuation of their family name was vital, since it seemed to put up a sort of bar between them and the grotesque liniment peddler. The townspeople always emphasized the first syllable in speaking of him.

The brothers had turned their backs upon each other, even in the building of their houses. While only an alley separated their stables in the rear, the Hon. Joseph's mansion looked out on a spacious avenue, and old Gid's cottage faced a dingy tenement street. He had his laboratory in the loft of his stable, from the windows of which he could overlook his brother's back premises.

Maud and Louise, regarding him and his business in the light of a family skeleton, ignored him as completely as a family skeleton can be ignored when it is of the kind that will not stay in its allotted closet. It seemed to meet them every time they opened their palatial front door. They could not turn a street corner without coming upon it. Only the ultra-sensitive young lady just home from the most select of fashionable schools can know the pangs that it cost Louise to see her family name staring at her in white letters from the bony sides of that old horse, in connection with a patent medicine advertisement; and the faintest whiff of any volatile oil suggesting liniment was enough to elevate Maud's aristocratic nose to the highest degree of scorn and disgust. Once, years ago, when the girls were too young to be ashamed of their eccentric kinsman, they had visited his laboratory out of childish curiosity. He had given them peanuts from a pocket redolent with liniment, and had asked them to come again, but they had had no occasion to repeat the visit until after they were grown.

It was the night before Louise's wedding day. They had both finished dressing for the evening, but, not quite satisfied with her appearance, Louise still stood before the mirror. She was trying to decide how to wear one of the roses which she had just shaken out of the great bunch on her dressing table. Ordinarily she would not have hesitated, for there was nothing she could do or wear that would not be admired by this little Western town. It was the card accompanying the roses which made her pause--the correct, elegant little card, engraved simply, "Mr. Edward Van Harlem." It seemed to confront her with the critical stare of the most formal New York aristocracy, coldly questioning her ability to live up to it and its traditions.

That the Van Harlems had violently opposed their son's marrying outside their own select circle she well knew. His mother could not forgive him, but he was her idol, and she was following him to his marriage as she would have followed to his martyrdom. By this time she was probably in Gentryville, at the hotel. She had refused to meet Louise until the next day.

Louise laid the great, leafy-stemmed rose against the white dress she wore. It was a beautiful picture that her mirror showed her, and for an instant there was a certain proud lifting of the girlish head; a gesture not unworthy the haughty Mrs. Van Harlem herself. But the next moment a tender light shone in her eyes, as if some sudden memory had banished the thought of the Knickerbocker displeasure.

The maid had brought in the evening paper, and Maud, picking it up, began reading the headlines aloud. Louise scarcely heard her. When one's lover is coming before the little cuckoo in the clock has time to call out another hour, what possible interest can press dispatches hold?

She laid the velvety petals against her warm cheek, and then softly touched them to her lips. At that, her own reflection in the mirror seemed to look at her with such a conscious smile that she glanced over her shoulder to see if her sister had been a witness too. As she did so, Maud dropped the paper with a horrified groan.

"Oh, Louise!" she cried. "What shall we do? There's to be an industrial parade to-morrow morning, with dozens of floats. The line of march is directly past the Continental Hotel. What will Mrs. Van Harlem say when she sees Uncle Gid's wagon and our name in the Wiggan Wild-cat advertisement?"

Louise dropped weakly into a chair, echoing her sister's groan. The colour had entirely left her face. She was more in awe of her patrician lover and his family than she had acknowledged, even to herself.

"Think of that awful, old moth-eaten wild-cat on a pole!" giggled Maud, hysterically.

"Think of Uncle Gid himself!" almost shrieked Louise. "It would kill me to have him pointed out to the Van Harlems as father's brother, and somebody will be sure to do it. There's always somebody mean enough to do such things."

Maud pushed aside the curtain and peered out into the June twilight, now so dim that the street lamps had begun to glimmer through the dusk.

"If we could only shut him up somewhere," she suggested. "Lock him down cellar--by accident--until after the parade, then he couldn't possibly disgrace us."

There was a long silence. Then Maud, dropping the curtain on the dusk of the outer world, turned from the window and came dancing back into the middle of the brightly lighted room.

"I've thought of a plan," she cried, jubilantly. "We can't do anything with Uncle Gid, but if the wild-cat and harness could be hidden until after the parade, that would keep him safely at home, hunting for them."

Louise caught at the suggestion eagerly, but immediately sank back with a despairing sigh. "It's of no use!" she exclaimed. "There's no one whom we could trust to send. If Uncle Gid should have the faintest suspicion of such a plot, there is nothing too dreadful for him to attempt in retaliation. He'd bring up the rear of the wedding procession itself with that disreputable old beast on a pole, if he thought it would humble our pride."

As she spoke, she again caught sight of the little card that had come with the roses. It nerved her to sudden action. "I must go myself," she cried, desperately, springing up from her chair.

"Oh, no!" exclaimed Maud, "you're surely joking. It's pitch dark in the stable by this time. Besides you might meet some one--"

"It's my only salvation," answered Louise, with an excited tremor in her voice. "Oh, you don't know the Van Harlems! Come on, Sis, and help me, that's a dear. It will be our last lark together."

"And our first one of this kind," answered Maud, drawing back. "Edward will be here in a few minutes, and--"

"All the more reason for us to hurry," interrupted Louise, taking a candle from the silver sconce on her dressing table, and snatching up some matches. "Come on!"

Carried away by her sister's impetuosity, Maud followed softly down the back stairs and across the tennis court. In their white dresses they glimmered through the dusk like ghosts. They were laughing under their breath when they started out, but as they crossed the dark alley they looked around nervously, and clutched each other like frightened schoolgirls.

Ten minutes later they were stealing up the back stairs again, carrying something between them wrapped in Maud's white petticoat. She had taken it off and wrapped it around the beast to avoid touching it. They had not been able to find a safe hiding place in the stable, and in sheer desperation had decided to carry it home with them for the night. A strong odour of liniment followed in their wake, for Louise, in her frantic haste, had upset a bottle all over the wild-cat, and liberally spattered herself with the pungent, oily mixture.

As they hurried up the stairs, the cook suddenly opened the door into the back hall, sending a stream of light across them from the kitchen. There was a look of amazement on her startled face as she recognized her young mistresses coming in the back way at such an hour, but she was too well trained to say anything. She only sniffed questioningly as the strange smell reached her nostrils, then shut the door.

Just as the girls reached the head of the stairs there was a loud ring of the front door-bell. "Edward!" exclaimed Louise, helplessly letting her end of the bundle slip.

"Run and change your dress," said Maud. "You are all cobwebs and soot from dragging that harness into the coal-cellar. I'll attend to this."

Opening the door into a little trunk room at the end of the hall, she dragged her burden inside. An empty dress-box on the floor suggested an easy way of disposing of it. But when she had stuffed it in, still wrapped in the petticoat, not satisfied as to its secrecy, she opened an empty trunk and lifted the box into that. As she passed her sister's door Louise called her.

"Here!" she said, despairingly, holding out both hands. "We might as well give up. Smell!"

Maud's nose went up in air. "Liniment!" she exclaimed, solemnly. "Yes, it's fate. We can't get away from it."

"Edward will wonder what it is," said Louise, almost tearfully. "Oh, it seems as if he must surely know. There's no mistaking _that_!"

Maud poured some cologne on her handkerchief, and rubbed it briskly over her sister's fingers. "You look as frightened as Blue Beard's wife when she dropped the key in the bloody closet."

All through her dressing, Louise kept sniffing suspiciously at her dainty fingers, and even when she was ready to go downstairs, stopped at the door to look back, like a second Lady Macbeth.

"'Not all the odours of Araby can sweeten that little hand,'" she said in a tragic whisper, and Maud answered under her breath:

"'You may break, you may shatter the vase if you will,
The scent of the roses will cling 'round it still.'"

A little later, Mrs. Wiggan's French maid, going into the trunk room with an armful of clothes, began packing the bride's dainty trousseau. The trunks to be used for that purpose had been pointed out to her that afternoon.

As she opened the first one, such a penetrating odour greeted her that she drew back.

"Maybe ze camphor ball," she exclaimed aloud, lifting a corner of the box which nearly filled the bottom of the trunk. "Ah yes!" she went on, peeping in. "It ees mademoiselle's furs, what air protect from ze bugs by zat killing odair. It will presairve also ze woollens as well." Forthwith she began deftly packing a pile of snowy flannels around the box which held the family disgrace.

Twenty-four hours later, that trunk among a number of others was jogging along in a baggage car on its way to New York. It was checked to the pier from which the _Majestic_ was to sail that week, and tagged, "For the hold."

It was the first parade that old Gid Wiggan had missed in twenty years, but it was not his niece's plotting which kept him at home. He lay with closed eyes in his dark little bedroom, too ill to know that a procession was passing. The old man had come to a place where he could no longer follow at the heels of a cheerful crowd. He must branch off by himself now, and find his solitary way as best he could, over a strangely lonesome road.

"He's an old miser, but it won't do to let him die like a heathen," said one of the neighbours, when his condition was discovered. So there were watchers by his bedside when the end came. Carriages had been rolling back and forth all the evening, and at last the ponderous rumbling aroused him.

"What's that?" he asked, opening his eyes as the sound of wheels reached him. "Is the parade coming?"

"Only the carriages driving back from St. Paul's," was the answer. "There's a wedding there to-night."

Old Gid closed his eyes again. "I remember now," he said. "It's Joe's little girl, but I didn't get a bid. They're ashamed of their old uncle. Well, they'll never be bothered with him any more now, nor any of his belongings."

The watchers exchanged glances and repeated the remark afterwards to the curious neighbours who came to look at the old man as he lay in his coffin. He had long had the reputation of being a miser, and more than one hand that day was passed searchingly over some piece of battered furniture. It was a common belief on that street that his fortune was stuffed away in some of the threadbare cushions.

His will, which came to light soon after, directed that the rickety old house should be sold to pay the expenses of his last illness and burial, and to erect a monument over him. As if not content with humiliating his family in the flesh, he had ordered that it be cut in stone: "Here lies the manufacturer and proprietor of Wiggan's Wild-cat Liniment." The old horse, after taking the part of chief mourner at his funeral, was to be chloroformed.

Of kith and kindred there had been no mention until the last clause of the will, by which he left the meagre contents of his laboratory to a distant cousin in Arizona, whom he had never seen, but who bore the same name as himself, with the addition of a middle initial. This was the clause which turned Gentryville upside down:

"And I also give, devise and bequeath to the said Gideon J. Wiggan, my stuffed wild-cat, hoping that he will find in it the mascot that I have found."

The same letter which informed the Arizona cousin of his legacy told him that it had mysteriously disappeared. No money was found in the house, and the disappearance of the wild-cat strengthened the prevalent belief that old Gid had used it as a receptacle for his savings, and had hidden it with all a miser's craftiness.

A week later the Arizona cousin appeared, having come East to unearth the mystery and to meet the remaining members of the Wiggan family, who, he understood, were living in Gentryville. He was too late. Maud and her mother had closed the house immediately after the wedding, and started on a summer jaunt, presumably to Alaska. His letters and telegrams received no answer and he could not locate his relatives, despite his persistent efforts. The more he investigated, the more he became convinced that old Gid, alienated from his immediate family, had made him his heir on account of the name, and that a fair-sized fortune was stuffed away in the body of the missing wild-cat. A few leaves from a queerly kept old ledger confirmed this opinion. Most of them had been torn out, but judging from the ones he examined, the receipts from the liniment sales must have been far greater than people supposed.

He did not suspect his cousin Joseph's family being a party to the disappearance, until some servants' gossip reached him. The cook gave him his first clue, when a dollar jogged her memory. She remembered having seen the young ladies slipping up the back stairs the night before the wedding, carrying something between them. The laundress had asked her the next day where the young ladies could have been to get their dresses so soiled in the evening. They were streaked with coal-soot and smelled strongly of the liniment that their uncle made. The French maid, who had not gone with her mistress, but had taken a temporary position with a dressmaker, recognized the odour when a bottle was brought to her. She swore that it was the same that mademoiselle's furs were filled with. She had smelled it first when she packed them in the trunk.

The evidence of the cook, the laundress and the maid was enough for Gideon J. Wiggan. He was a loud, rough man, without education, but so uniformly successful in all his business enterprises that he had come to have an unbounded conceit, and an unlimited faith in himself. "I never yet bit off any more than I could chew," he was fond of saying. "I'm a self-made man. I've never failed in anything yet. I'm my own lawyer and my own doctor, and now I'll be my own detective; and I'll worm this thing out, if I have to go to Europe to do it."

To Europe he finally went. The happy bridal couple, making a tour of the cathedral towns of England, little dreamed what an avenging Nemesis was following fast in the wake of their honeymoon. From Canterbury to York he followed them, from York to Chester. They had always just gone. Evidently they were trying to elude him. Once he almost had his hand upon them. It was in London. He had reached the Hotel Metropole only two hours after their departure. They had gone ostensibly to Paris, but had left no address. He ground his teeth when he discovered that fact. How was he to trace them further without the slightest clue and without the faintest knowledge of any foreign tongue? For the first time in his life he had to acknowledge himself baffled.

The next day, while he was making cautious inquiries at Scotland Yard, preparatory to engaging a first-class detective, he fell in with an old acquaintance, a man whom he had known in Arizona, and who was employed in the detective service himself. He had been sent over on the trail of some counterfeiters, and seemed to have an inexhaustible fund of information about every wealthy American who had gone abroad that summer. Within half an hour the baffled Gideon had put his case into his hands, humbly acknowledging that for once in his life he had bitten off more than he could chew.

* * * * *

Dinner was in progress in one of the most fashionable hotels of Paris. Edward Van Harlem, seated opposite his wife at one of the many little tables, looked around approvingly. His fastidious eyes saw nothing to criticize in the whole luxurious apartment, except perhaps the too cheerful expression of the man who served them. A more sphinx-like cast of countenance would have betokened better training. Then he looked critically at his wife. It may be that the elegant New Yorker was a trifle over-particular, but he could find no fault here. She was the handsomest woman in the room. She was dressed for the opera, and the priceless Van Harlem pearls around her white throat were worthy of a duchess. She wore them with the air of one, too, he noticed admiringly. He had not realized that a little Western girl could be so regal. Ah! if his mother could only see her now!

"What is it, Louise?" he asked, seeing her give a slight start of surprise. "Those two men at the table behind you," she answered, almost in a whisper, for the service was so noiseless and the general conversation so subdued that she was afraid of being overheard. "They look so common and out of place in their rough travelling suits. They are the only persons in the room not in evening dress."

Van Harlem turned slightly and gave a supercilious glance behind him. "How did such plebeians ever get in here?" he said, frowning slightly. "I wish America would keep such specimens at home. It's queer they should stumble into an exclusive place like this. They must feel like fish out of water."

Louise tasted her soup, and then looked up again. One of the men was watching her like a hawk. His persistent gaze annoyed her, but there was a compelling force about it that made her steal another glance at him. His eyes held hers an instant in startled fascination, then she dropped them with a sudden fear that made her cold and faint. The man bore a remarkable likeness to her Uncle Gideon. More than that, she had discovered some resemblance to her father in the determined chin and the way his hair rolled back from his forehead. That little droop of the lip was like her father's, too. Could it be that there was some remote tie between them and that the stranger was staring at her because he, too, saw a family likeness? She was afraid for her husband to turn around lest he should discover it also.

Ever since the arrival of the mails that morning, she had been in a state of nervous apprehension. Somebody had sent her a marked copy of the _Gentryville Times_, with an account of her uncle's will and the heir's vain search for his legacy. She had wanted to write immediately to Maud, and ask if she had remembered, in the confusion that followed the wedding, to restore the old man's property, but Edward had carried her away for a day's sight-seeing, and she had had no opportunity.

As she sat idly toying with her dinner, some intuition connected this man with her Uncle Gideon, and she was in a fever of impatience to get away, for fear he might obtrude himself on her husband's notice. When they had first swept into the dining-room, the Arizona cousin had leaned over the table until his face almost touched the detective's. "They're stunners! Ain't they?" he whispered. "Wonder if any of my money bought them pearls and gew-gaws. Well, this show's worth the box-seat prices we paid to get next to 'em. I wonder if the waiter would have promised to put us alongside if I'd offered him any less than a five-franc piece." Then, as Louise's eyes fell before his in embarrassment, he muttered, "She looks guilty, doesn't she! I'll bet my hat she suspicions what we're after."

The two men were only beginning their salad course, when Van Harlem beckoned a waiter and gave an order in French. "What did he say?" asked Wiggan, suspiciously. "I wish I could make out their beastly lingo."

"He sent to call a carriage, and to tell the maid to bring the lady's wraps. They're going to the opera."

"You mean they're going to give us the slip again! Come on! We must stop 'em!"

"Now, Gid, you just cool down," advised the detective, calmly. "I'm working this little game. It's a family affair and there's no use making a row in public. There's plenty of time." But his client had no ear for caution. The Van Harlems had risen, and were going slowly down the long drawing-room. All eyes followed the beautiful American girl and the aristocratic young fellow who carried himself like a lord. The mirror-lined walls flashed back the pleasing reflection from every side, and then replaced it with a most astonishing sight.

In and out between the little tables with their glitter of cut-glass and silver, dashed a common-looking fellow in a coarse plaid suit. Upsetting chairs, whisking table-cloths from their places, bumping into solemn waiters with their laden trays, he seemed oblivious to everything but the escaping couple. The detective had detained him as long as possible, and the couple had almost reached the door when he started in frantic pursuit. He reached them just as they stepped into the corridor. He tried to curb his trembling voice, but in his excitement it rang out to the farthest corner of the great apartment, high above the music of the violins, playing softly in a curtained alcove.

"You want your _what_?" demanded the elegant Van Harlem in a tone that would have frozen a less desperate man.

"I want that stuffed wild-cat," he roared, "that your wife's uncle left me in his will, and you made off with. I came all the way from America for it, and I'll have it now, or you'll go to jail, sure as my name is Gideon J. Wiggan."

Louise, already unnerved by her fears at dinner, and exhausted by the tiresome day of sight-seeing, started forward, deathly pale. It seemed to her that the man had shouted out her name so that all Paris must have heard. The disgrace had followed her even over seas.

She looked up piteously at her husband, and then fell fainting in his arms.

"The man's crazy," exclaimed Van Harlem, as he strode with her toward the elevator. "Here, waiter, call the police and have that lunatic put out of the house. He's dangerous."

It was only a moment until he had reached their rooms and had laid Louise gently on a couch, but as he turned to ring for the maid, the two men confronted him on the threshold. The detective bolted the door, and the Arizona cousin took out his revolver.

"No, you don't ring that bell," he exclaimed, seeing Van Harlem move in the direction of the button; "nor you don't get out of here until you hand over that wild-cat. You've got it and your wife knows it. That's why she fainted. My friend here is a detective, and we're going through your things till we find it, for it's full of gold."

Van Harlem moved forward to wrest away the revolver, but the detective presented his. "No, you can't do that either," he said, quietly. "I'm going to see that my friend gets his rights."

With the helpless feeling that he was in the hands of two madmen, Van Harlem stood by while trunk after trunk was overhauled, and the trousseau scattered all over the room. The one containing the flannels had not been unlocked since it left Gentryville. It was the last to be examined.

Louise opened her eyes with a little shriek as a familiar odour penetrated to her consciousness. They had unearthed the family skeleton. "_Louise!_" cried her husband as the old moth-eaten animal was dragged from under her dainty lingerie. "What under _heaven_ does this mean?" Another fainting spell was her only answer, and the one yellow glass eye leered up at him, as if defying the whole Van Harlem pedigree.

A minute later a stream of saw-dust oozed out from the beast's body, covering the piles of be-ribboned lace and linen, scattered all over the velvet carpet. Then a limp, shapeless skin with its one yellow eye still glaring, was kicked across the room. The Arizona cousin had no further use for it. He had come into his inheritance.

He walked across the room and gave the moth-eaten skin another kick. Then, with an oath, he handed his friend a slip of paper which he had found inside. Written across it in faded purple ink were three straggling lines. It was the formula for making the famous "Wiggan's Wild-cat Liniment."

The Third Traveler

The Clown

Towards his Accolade

THE little man in motley, thrusting his face through the curtains of the big circus tent, looked out on the gathering crowds and grinned. To him that assemblage of gaping backwoods pioneers was a greater show than the one he was travelling with, although the circus itself was a pioneer in its way. It was the first that had ever travelled through the almost unbroken forests of southern Indiana, and the fame of its performance at Vincennes had spread to the Ohio long before the plodding oxen had drawn the heavy lion cages half that distance. Such wild rumours of it had found their way across the sparsely settled hills and hollows, that families who had not been out of sight of their cabin chimneys in five years or more were drawn irresistibly circusward.

Standing on a barrel, behind a hole in the canvas of the tent, the little clown amused himself by watching the stream of arrivals. As far as he could see, down the glaringly sunny road, rising clouds of dust betokened the approach of a seemingly endless procession. The whole county appeared to be flocking to the commons just outside of Burnville, where the annual training in military tactics took place on "muster days." People were coming by the wagon-load; nearly every horse carried double, and one old nag ambled up with a row of boys astride her patient back from neck to tail.

It was a hot afternoon in August, and a rank, almost overpowering odour of dog-fennel rose from the dusty weeds trampled down around the tent. The little clown was half stifled by the dust, the heat, and the smell, and the perspiration trickled down his grotesquely painted face; but an occasional impatient flapping of his handkerchief to clear away the dust of a new arrival was all that betrayed his discomfort. He was absorbed in the conversation of a little group who, seated on a log directly under his peep-hole in the canvas, were patiently waiting for the performance to begin.

"My motley can't hold a candle to theirs," he thought, with an amused chuckle, as he surveyed them critically. "Judging by the cut of that girl's old silk dress, it was a part of her grandmother's wedding finery, and she probably spun the stuff for that sunbonnet herself. But the man--Moses in the bulrushes! People back East wouldn't believe me if I told them how he is togged out: tow trousers, broadcloth coat with brass buttons, bare feet, and a coonskin cap, on this the hottest of all the hot dog-days ever created!"

He wiped his face again after this inventory, and steadied himself on the barrel. All unconscious of the audience they were entertaining, the man and girl were retailing the neighbourhood news to a tired-looking little woman, who sat on the log beside them, with a heavy baby in her arms. Their broad Western speech was as unfamiliar as it was amusing to their unseen listener. The barrel shook with his suppressed laughter, as they repeated the rumours they had heard regarding the circus.

"Thar was six oxen to draw the lion cages," said the girl, fanning herself with her sunbonnet. "Sam said them beasts roared to beat the Dutch--two of 'em. And he says thar's a pock-marked Irishman as goes around between acts with a nine-banded armadillo. Ef ye tech it, ye'll never have the toothache no more. But thar's suthin better nor him. Sam says he 'lows we'll jest all die a-laughin' when we see the clown. The whole end of the State has gone wild over that air clown. Sam says they make more fuss over him than they would over the President ef he was t' come to this neck o' woods."

Here the auditor behind the scenes, with his hand on his heart, made such a low bow that he lost his balance, and nearly upset the barrel.

"I reckon the elyfunt will be the biggest sight," drawled the man. "That's what drawed me here. I ain't never seen even the picter of an elyfunt, and they say this is the real live article from t'other side of the world. They say it kin eat a cock of hay six foot high at one meal."

Here the baby stirred and fretted in the woman's arms, and she wearily lifted it to an easier position against her shoulder.

"I wish Jim would hurry up," she sighed, wiping her hot face on a corner of her homespun apron.

"He's over yander helpin' ole Mis' Potter put up her ginger-bread stand," answered the girl, pointing to a large oak-tree on the edge of the common. "I seen 'em when she first come a-drivin' up on that big ox-sled, with a barrel of cider behind her. Law, I reckon she hain't never missed bein' on hand to sell her cakes and cider here on muster-days nary a time in ten years."

"'Tain't Mis' Potter," answered the older woman. "She's ben laid up with rheumatiz nearly all summer. It's Boone Ratcliffe's mother and his little William."

"You don't mean it!" exclaimed the girl, with eager interest, standing up to get a better view. "Not ole 'Madam Ratcliffe,' as pap calls her! I've ben honin' for a sight of her ever sence last spring, when I heerd she'd come out from Maryland. I used to hear about her afore Boone married M'randy. It was M'randy as told me about her. She said the ole lady was so rich and so stuck up that she never even tied her own shoes. They had slaves and land and money and everything that heart could wish, and they didn't think that M'randy was good enough for their only son. The letters they writ to Boone trying to head him off made M'randy so mad that I didn't suppose she'd ever git over it."

"She didn't," answered the little woman, "and it was scant welcome they got when they come. The letter they sent a month aforehand never got here, so of course nobody knowed they was a-comin', and they wa'n't nobody down to the Ohio River landin' to meet 'em. My Jim he happened to be thar when they got off'n the flatboat. They was dreadful put out when they didn't find Boone watchin' out for 'em, after comin' all the way from Maryland. Goodness knows what 'ud become of 'em ef Jim hadn't happened acrost 'em. The boat had gone on down the river and left 'em settin' thar on shore amongst the bales and boxes, as helpless as two kittens. Jim he seen 'em a-settin' thar, and bein' a soft-hearted chap and knowin' suthin' was wrong, he up and spoke.

"They was so bewildered like, 'count of not finding Boone and everything bein' so dif'runt from what they lotted on, that they was well-nigh daft. The ole man had ben sick ever sence they left Pittsburg, and they was both plum tuckered out with that long flatboat trip. Jim he jest h'isted 'em into the wagon, big chest and all, and brought 'em on to Burnville.

"He said 'twas plain to be seen they hadn't never been used to roughin' it in any way. The ole gentleman was so sick he had to lean his head on her shoulder all the way, and she kep' a-strokin' his white hair with her fine soft fingers, and talkin' to him as if he'd ben a child. She tried to chirk him up by tellin' him they'd soon be to Boone's home, and talkin' 'bout when Boone was a little feller, tell Jim couldn't hardly stand it, he's that soft-hearted.

"He knew all the time what a disapp'intment was in store when they should set eyes on M'randy and the cabin, and find Boone growed to be so rough and common. It was dark when they got thar. Boone hadn't got home yit, and thar wa'n't a sign of a light about the place. So Jim lef' the ole folks setting in the wagon, and went in to break the news to M'randy, knowin' what a high-tempered piece she is at times. He said she was settin' on the doorstep in her bare feet and dirty ole linsey-woolsey dress, jawin' little William. She'd ben a-makin' soap all day, and was dead tired.

"When Jim tole her what 'twas, the surprise seemed to strike her all of a heap. She never made a move to git up, and as soon as she could git her breath she begun to splutter like blue blazes. She said some folks had more burdens laid onto their shoulders than by rights was their share, and she couldn't see what made them ole people come trackin' out where they was neither wanted nor expected. She hadn't no airthly use for that stuck-up ole Mis' Ratcliffe, if she was Boone's mother. Oh, she jest talked up scan'lous.

"Jim he was afraid they would hear her clear out in the road, so he kep' tryin' to smooth her down, and then he went out and tried to smooth things over to the ole people. By the time they'd climbed out'n the wagon and walked up the path, William had lit a candle, and she was holdin' it over her head in the doorway. The way Jim tole it I could jest see how they stood lookin' at each other, like as they was takin' their measures. Jim said they both seemed to see the difference, M'randy so frowsy and common-lookin', for all her prettiness, and the ole lady so fine and aristocratic in her elegant dress and bunnit. He said he'd never fergit how white and tired-lookin' their old faces showed up in the candle-light, and sort of disapp'inted, too, over the welcome they'd ben expectin' and didn't git.

"M'randy didn't even offer to shake hands. After she'd stared a minute she said, sorter stiff-like, 'Well, I s'pose you may as well come on in.' Jim says there was tears in the ole lady's eyes when she follered M'randy into the cabin, but she wiped 'em away real quick, and spoke up cheerful to ole Mr. Ratcliffe.

"The room was in such a muss there wa'n't an empty chair to set on tell M'randy jerked the things off two of'm and kicked the stuff out of sight under the bed. Then she dusted 'em with her apron, and said in a long-sufferin' sort of tone that she reckoned 'twas about as cheap settin' as standin'.

"Ole Mis' Ratcliffe tried to apologize fer comin'. She said that their daughter back in Maryland tried to keep 'em from it, but that Boone couldn't come to them, and it had been ten years since he had left home, and they felt they must see him once more before they died. Jim said it was so pitiful the way she talked that he got all worked up."

"Why didn't they turn right around and go home the next day?" cried the girl, with flashing eyes. "That's M'randy all over again when she once gits her temper up, but people as rich as them don't have to put up with nobody's high and mighty ways."

"They are not rich any more," was the answer. "A few years ago they lost all they had, slaves, land, and everything, and their married daughter in Baltimore is takin' care of 'em. She was sure they wouldn't find it agreeable out here, so she provided the money for 'em to come back on; but the ole man lost his wallet comin' down on that flatboat, and they don't feel as they could write back and ask her for more. She's good to 'em as can be, but she hasn't got any more than she needs, and they hate to ask for it. That's why the ole lady is here to-day, takin' Mis' Potter's place. Boone persuaded her to come, and tole her if she could make as much as Mis' Potter always does, it will be enough to pay their way back to Maryland. He helped her get ready. I don't know what he said to M'randy to make her stand aside and not interfere, but she made up the ginger-bread as meek as Moses, and let Jim roll the barrel of cider out of the smoke-house without a word."

"Why don't Boone scratch around and raise the money somehow?" put in the man, who had chewed in interested silence as he listened to the story. Now he stopped to bite another mouthful from a big twist of tobacco he took from his broadcloth coat pocket.

"'Pears like their only son is the one that ought to do fer 'em, and at least he could make M'randy shut up and treat his parents civil."

"Boone!" sniffed the woman. "Why, he's under M'randy's thumb so tight that he dassent sneeze if she don't take snuff. Besides, he's ben on the flat of his back off and on all summer, with dumb ague. It's run into a slow fever now, and it takes every picayune they can scrape together to git his medicines. Then, too, M'randy sprained her ankle a month or so back, and things have been awful sence then. The ole man he don't realize he is in the way, he's so childish and broken down. He jest sorter droops around, pinin' for the comforts he's always ben used to, in a way that almost breaks his ole wife's heart. She feels it keen enough for both of 'em, because she can't bear to see him lackin' anything he needs, and she'd rather die than be a burden to anybody.

"I tell Jim I'm sorry for the whole set, and I can see it isn't the pleasantest thing for M'randy to give up a room to them when thar's only two in the cabin, and her ways ain't their ways, and their bein' thar puts everything out of joint; but Jim he sides with the ole people. He's mighty sorry for 'em, and would have put his hand in his own pocket and paid their expenses long ago back to Maryland, ef he'd a-ben able. He's ben a great comfort to the ole lady, he's jest that soft-hearted. I hope she'll sell out as fast as Mis' Potter always done."

Before the girl could echo her wish, there was a discordant scraping inside the tent, a sound of the band beginning to tune their instruments. Instantly there was a rush toward the tent, and all three of the little group sprang to their feet. The little woman looked wildly around for Jim, with such an anxious expression that the clown lingered a moment, regardless of the stream of people pouring into the entrance so near him that the curtain which screened him from public view was nearly torn down. He waited until he saw a burly, good-natured man push his way through the crowds and transfer the heavy baby from the woman's tired arms to his broad shoulder. Then he turned away with a queer little smile on his painted face.

"He's jest that soft-hearted," he repeated, half under his breath. The woman's story had stirred him strangely. "It's a pity there's not more like him," he continued. "I guess that too few Jims and too many M'randys is what is the matter with this dizzy old planet."

"What's that ye're grumbling about, Humpty Dumpty?" asked the pock-marked Irishman as he came up with his nine-banded armadillo, all ready for the performance. Then in his most professional tones: "If it is the toothache yez have now, I'll be afther curing it entoirely wid wan touch of this baste from----"

"Oh, get out!" exclaimed the clown, putting his hand on the tall Irishman's shoulder and springing lightly down from the barrel. "I'm dead sick of all this monkey business. If it wasn't a matter of bread-and-butter I wouldn't laugh again in a year."

"Ye couldn't make anybody out there in that big aujence belave it," laughed the Irishman. "They think yer life is wan perpetooal joke; that ye're a joke yerself for that matther, a two-legged wan, done up in cap and bells."

"You're right," said the clown bitterly, looking askance at his striped legs. "But 'a man's a man for a' that and a' that,' and he gets tired sometimes of always being taken for a jesting fool. Curse this livery!"

The Irishman looked at him shrewdly. "Ye should have gone in for a 'varsity cap and gown, and Oi've been thinking that maybe ye did start out that way."

A dull red glowed under the paint on the clown's face, and he ran into the ring in response to the signal without a reply. A thundering round of applause greeted him, which broke out again as he glanced all around with a purposely silly leer. Then he caught sight of Jim's honest face, smiling expectantly on him from one of the front benches. It struck him like a pain that this man could not look through his disguise of tawdry circus trappings, and see that a man's heart was beating under the clown's motley. There came a sudden fierce longing to tear off his outward character of mountebank, for a moment, and show Jim the stifled nature underneath, noble enough to recognize the tender chivalry hidden in the rough exterior of the awkward backwoodsman, and to be claimed by him as a kindred spirit.

As he laughed and danced and sang, no one dreamed that his thoughts kept reverting to scenes that the woman's story had called up, or that a plan was slowly shaping in his mind whereby he might serve the homesick old soul waiting out under the oak-tree for the performance to be done.

No wonder that people accustomed to seeing old Mrs. Potter in that place, gowned in homespun, and knitting a coarse yarn sock, had stopped to stare at the newcomer. Such a type of high-born, perfect ladyhood had never appeared in their midst before. The dress that she wore was a relic of the old Maryland days; so was the lace cap that rested like a bit of rare frost-work on her silvery hair. Mrs. Potter knew everybody for miles around, and was ready to laugh and joke with any one who stopped at her stand. Mrs. Ratcliffe sat in dignified silence, a faint colour deepening in her cheeks like the blush of a winter rose. It was so much worse than she had anticipated to have these rude strangers staring at her, as if she were a part of the show. She breathed a sigh of relief when the music began, for it drew the crowds into the tent as if by magic. She and little William were left entirely alone.

With the strident boom of the bass viol came the rank smell of the dog-fennel that hurrying feet had left bruised and wilting in the sun. All the rest of her life, that warm, weedy odour always brought back that humiliating experience like a keen pain. The horses in the surrounding grove stamped restlessly and whinnied as they switched off the flies. The long ride and the unaccustomed labour of the morning had exhausted her. She began to nod in her chair, giving herself up to a sense of drowsiness, for as long as the people were in the tent she would have no occupation.

Her white head dropped lower and lower, until presently she was oblivious to all surroundings. Little William, sitting on the old wood-sled with his back against the cider barrel, was forgotten. M'randy and the ill-kept cabin vanished entirely from her memory. She was back in the old Maryland days on her father's plantation, hedged about with loving forethought, as tenderly sheltered as some delicate white flower. Every path had been made smooth for her, every wish anticipated all her life long, until that day when they had set their faces westward to find Boone. It was coming down the Ohio on that long journey by flatboat that she suddenly woke to the knowledge that her husband's illness had left him a broken-down old man, as weak and irresponsible as a child.

But mercifully her dreams were back of that time. They were back with Boone in his gay young boyhood, when he danced minuets with the Governor's daughter, and entertained his college friends in lordly style on the old plantation. Back of that time when the restlessness of his 'teens sent him roving over the Alleghanies to the frontier, regardless of their long-cherished ambitions for him. Back of the time when in a sudden mad whim he had married a settler's pretty daughter, whom he was ashamed to take back to civilization when he thought of the Baltimore belles to whom he had paid boyish court. He had not stopped to consider her rough speech and uncouth manners. He had been a long time out in the wilderness, he was only twenty, and her full red lips tempted him.

If the dreams could only have stopped then, that little space she slept, while the circus band thrummed and drummed inside the tent, and the shadows of the hot August afternoon lengthened under the still trees outside, would have been a blessed respite. But they repeated the unpleasant parts as well. They came on down to the night of that unwelcome arrival. They showed her the days when Boone lay prostrated with a slow malarial fever; the days when the fierce heat made him drag his pallet desperately from one corner to another across the bare puncheons, trying to find a spot where he could be comfortable. She could see him lying as he had so often lain, with his face turned toward the back door, looking out with aching eyes on the tall corn that filled the little clearing. In his feverish wanderings he complained that it was crowding up around the house trying to choke him. And there was little William, little nine-year-old William, sitting on the floor beside him, attempting to flap away the flies with a bunch of walnut leaves. There were long intervals sometimes when the heat overpowered the child with drowsiness. Then the walnut branch wavered uncertainly or stopped in mid-air, while he leaned against the table leg with closed eyes and open mouth. Sometimes Miranda slept on the door-step, bare-footed, as usual, with a dirty bandage around her sprained ankle.

In that short sleep she seemed to relive the whole summer, that had dragged on until her sense of dependence grew to be intolerable. Miranda's shrill complaining came penetrating again into the tiny room where she sat by her husband's bed, and the old head was bowed once more on his pillow as she sobbed: "Oh, William, dear heart, if the Lord would only take us away together! I cannot bear to be a burden to any one!" It was the sound of her own sobbing that awakened her, and she sat up with a sudden start, realizing that she had been asleep. She must have slept a long time. In that interval of unconsciousness the tavern-keeper from Burnville had erected a rival stand a few rods away.

She saw with dismay his attractive display of "store" goods. Then her face flushed as he began to set out whisky bottles and glasses. Her first impulse was to gather up her belongings and get home as quickly as possible. In her perplexity she looked around for little William. Regarding a circus with such contempt herself, it had never occurred to her that he would care to see it.