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Title: Andy the Acrobat

Author: Peter T. Harkness

Release Date: December 7, 2003 [EBook #10396]

Language: English

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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