The Court of Boyville

MUCH POMP AND SEVERAL CIRCUMSTANCES He jumped for the slanting boards with his bare feet, and his heart was glad . He sat on a log and slowly lifted up his foot, twisting his face into an agonized knot . "Here, here, Jimmy Sears, hold on there!" cried a voice. Jimmy knew the voice. It and the chicken belonged to the same person. So Jimmy quickened his speed. He heard the clattering thump of pursuing feet. It was two hundred yards to the end of the cob-strewn cow lot. The boy fixed his course toward the lowest length of fence. Then he kept his eyes upon the ground. He clenched his teeth and skimmed over the earth. The feathers in his hat—stuck there to satisfy the verities of his assumed Indian character—caught the breeze; so, rather than lose his hat, he grabbed it in the hand that held the chicken. He cleared the fence and plunged into the timber. Looking over his shoulder, he saw a man's form on the top of the fence; the thud of boots on the sod and the crash of branches behind him sent terror through the boy's frame, and he turned towards the creek that flowed sluggishly near by. He took great bounding strides, throwing his head from side to side as he ran. The boy knew the path. It led to a rickety fence—a cattle guard—across the river. Jimmy's heart beat wildly, and the trees danced by him on the sloping path. But he was not "the champeen fence-walker of Willow Creek," late of "Pennington & Carpenter's Circus & Menagerie, price ten pins," without having won his proud place by prowess. He came to the water's edge with sure feet. He knew that he could cross. He had crossed the creek there a score of times. He jumped for the slanting boards with his bare feet, and his heart was glad. The boy was sure that no man would dare to follow him, even if the fence would hold a man's weight. He had scurried up the bank before his pursuer had reached the side Jimmy had leaped from so lightly. He scooted through the underbrush. Again and again did the "champeen fence-walker" smile to himself as he slackened his pace to dodge a volley of rocks, and again and again did James Sears—an exemplary youth for the most part, who knew his Ten Commandments by heart—look exultingly at his pullet. He gloried in his iniquity. Lentulus returning to Capua with victorious legions was not so proud. But there the evil spirit swooped low upon him—the spirit of destruction that always follows pride. Jimmy tripped, and lunged forward; the chicken, the hat, the bow and arrow, and the boy all parted company. Then Jimmy felt a pain—a sharp pain that he recognized too well. He feared to make sure of the extent of his injury. Instinctive knowledge told him he had "stumped" his toe. This knowledge also brought the sense of certainty that his day's pleasure was spoiled. He knew that he would go hobbling along, the last brave in the Indian file. The pain in his foot began to throb as he gathered up his weapons. He walked for a few moments without looking at the wound. He felt the oozing blood, and he bent his body and went along, grunting at every step. Finally coming into a flood of sunlight on the path, he sat on a log and slowly lifted up his foot, twisting his face into an agonized knot. He peeked at his toe at first stealthily; then little by little uncovering it with his nursing hand, he gazed fixedly at the wound. The flesh on the end of the toe was hanging loosely by the skin. It was a full minute before the boy could find courage to press the hanging flesh back to its place. In the mean time the chicken, which lay behind him under the log, had regained its senses, squawked hoarsely twice, and walked into the bushes. When Jimmy's mind turned to his prize, the prize was gone. He had been in the depths as he sat on the log. But the loss of the pullet brought with it a still further depression, and Jimmy forgot all about his impersonation of the "Bald Eagle." He lost his conceit in the red ochre stripes on his face, and the iridescent feathers in his hat, and the blue-black mud on his nimble feet. For a few moments he was just a sad-eyed boy who saw the hand of the whole world raised against him. The cry of the new baby rang in his ears. The thought of the other boys teasing him about the number of babies at his house frenzied him; and as his bills of wrongs grew longer and longer, Jimmy shook his head defiantly at all the world. For a few hollow moments Jimmy tried to find the straying chicken. He went through the empty form of spitting in his hand, saying, before he came down with his index finger,— "Spit, spit, spy, Tell me whur my chicken is, er I'll hit ye in the eye." Spit, spit, spy, tell me whur my chicken is, er I'll hit ye in the eye . He threw a stick in the direction the chicken might have taken, but he knew that luck—like all the world—was against him, and he had no heart in the rites that on another day might have brought fortune to him. His stubbed toe was hurting him, and the murmur of a ripple in the stream a few rods below the cattle guard called to him enticingly. As soon as the boy deemed it safe to venture out of the thicket, he hobbled down to the water's edge, and sat for a long time in the shade, with the cooling water laving his bruised feet. He knew that the other boys would miss him, but he did not care. He was enjoying the gloom that was settling down upon him. Slowly, and by almost imperceptible degrees, there rose in his consciousness the conviction of guilt. At the end of an hour, the feeling that he was a thief swept over him, covering his sense of personal grievance like a mantle. For another hour he wrestled with a persistent devil that was tempting him to strangle his scruples; he won. Jimmy Sears had seventeen cents in his cast-iron bank at home—the result of a year's careful saving. He crossed the creek and trudged back to town, and fancied that he was walking in a sanctified road; for he was full of the resolve to go straight to the store of the grocer who owned the chicken, and to offer all his available resources in payment for the wrong he had done. Only the heel of his left foot touched the ground, and he progressed slowly. So the afternoon was old when he turned the corner and trudged into Baker's store. The speech he was going to make, Jimmy had recited to himself over and over. He intended to walk up to the counter and say,— "I want to pay for that chicken I took, Mr. Baker." To Jimmy that sounded sufficiently humble, and yet it did not seem completely abject. He fancied the grocer would reply,— "All right, Jimmy; it will be twenty cents." To which the boy expected to answer, in a clear, strong voice,— "Well, Mr. Baker, I have seventeen cents at home; you may have that, and I will bring in the rest as soon as my mushmelons are ripe." With that agreement reached, Jimmy saw himself limping out of the store. He harbored a hope that maybe the grocer, pitying the poor, lame boy, would call him back, cancel the debt, and perhaps give him a stick of licorice. Jimmy knew his part by heart. He was sure there would be no halt nor break in this dialogue. But the demon that was torturing his destiny that day probably chuckled as Jimmy crossed the threshold of the grocery store. The boy that the grocer saw when he looked up from the pickle barrel certainly had a badly freckled face; the grocer thought the boy had bold, mean eyes. The youthful jaw set firmly, and the pain in his foot engraved ugly lines in his face. The button was off one wristband. A long tear down the lower part of his trousers' leg revealed a glimpse of brown, tanned skin. He was not a boy that looked like a creature of dreams and of high resolve. No boy that amounts to much ever does look the part, as the actors say. So when Jimmy Sears—ragged and brazen—stood before the wronged chicken owner, rage flooded the man's bosom. He rushed around the counter end, mumbling at the boy. The instinct of fear crowded all the fine speeches out of Jimmy's head. He backed off, and exclaimed, as he saw the grocer grab a butter paddle,— "Dern you, don't you touch me; I'll pay for your old chicken. Watch out now!" " I'll pay for your chicken, I say. Now you keep away from me ." Two scale weights slipped involuntarily into Jimmy's hands, and he backed from the counter to the sidewalk. His hands were uplifted as if to throw the weights. The grocer had not come up to the boy who shouted in a burst of fear and anger,— "I'll pay for your chicken, I say. Now you keep away from me!" The grocer hesitated, dismayed for a second by the threatening weights in the boy's hand. But pride urged the man on. He stepped up quickly, and planted a smarting blow on Jimmy's leg. It was well for the grocer that he ducked his head; for when the paddle struck, the boy did not flinch, but let drive one weight after another, and cried before each crash of glass that the flying irons made inside the store, "Yes, you will!" and again, "Yes, you will!" He forgot the ache in his cramped heel and the burning in his bruised toe as he ran to the middle of the street. "You old coward, why don't you pick on some one your size?" The tears were rising to his eyes; he had to run to escape from the tide. Just as he turned, he caught a glimpse of his father joining the gathering crowd. After that his feet grew wings. A freight train stood on the track in front of the boy, a quarter of a mile away. A mad impulse came to him as he ran, and he yielded to it. A boy with a grievance, or a boy with a sore toe, or a boy with fear at his back, cannot fashion his conduct after the beautiful principles laid down in Mr. Herbert Spencer's "Data of Ethics." So when Jimmy Sears came to the freight train that blocked his flight, he darted down the track until he was out of sight of any possible pursuers in the street. He clambered breathlessly into a coal car, and snuggled down into a corner inside a little strip of shade, and panted like a hunted rabbit. A sickening pain throbbed up from his toe. The train moved slowly at first, and Jimmy knew that he could not hide from the train men in a coal car. On a banter from Piggy Pennington and Bud Perkins Jimmy had ridden on the brake-beam while the switch engine was pulling freight cars about the railroad yards. He had a vague idea that midway of the train, between two box cars, would be a safe place. When the train began to increase its speed, Jimmy climbed up the side of a cattle car and ran along the roof. He had gone three car-lengths and was about to make his third jump, when he saw the angry face of his father, who appeared on the depot platform. Instinctively the boy darted to the other side of the car-roof. His jump fell short. The father saw his son's head go down, and for an awful minute Henry Sears heard the lumbering train rumble by. In the first second of that minute, the frantic man listened for a scream. He heard none. Then slowly he sank upon a baggage truck. He was helpless. A paralysis of horror was upon him. Car after car jolted along. At last the yellow caboose flashed by him. Half of the longest second Henry Sears ever knew passed before he dared turn his eyes toward the place on the track where his son went down. Then he looked, and saw only the cinder track and the shining rails. But an instant later he heard a familiar whoop, and, staring around, saw Jimmy sitting on a load of wheat that was standing between the railroad tracks. In this the boy had fallen after his sidewise jump had thrown him from the moving train. When Henry Sears saw his son, Jimmy was holding his foot, jiggling it vigorously and roaring, moved half by the hysteria of fright and half by the pain of a fresh laceration of his bruised toe. The boy's face was black with coal-dust and wheat chaff, and tears were striping his features grotesquely. The palsy of terror loosened its steel bands from the father's limbs, and he ran to the wheat-wagon. Jimmy Sears, for all he or his father know, may have floated to the ground from the wagon bed. But a moment later, in a frenzy wherein anger furnished only a sub-conscious motor, and joy pumped wildly at the expanding valves of his blissful heart, Henry Sears took his thirteen-year-old son across his knee, and spanked him in a delirium of ecstasy; spanked him merrily, while a heavenly peace glorified his paternal soul; spanked him, caring not how many times the little body wriggled, and the little voice howled, and the dirty little fingers foiled his big, bony hand as it fell. At the end of the felicitous occasion, the father found his voice,— "Haven't I told you enough, sir, to keep off the cars? Haven't I? Haven't I? Answer me, sir. Do you hear me? Haven't I?" And Jimmy Sears knew by that turn of the conversation that the episodes of the stolen chicken and of the broken showcases were forgotten, so he nodded a contrite head, His father returned to earth by giving his son a few casual cuffs, with, "Will you try that again, sir?" and continued,— "Now, sir, let me see you walk right straight home. And just you let me catch you down here again!" Jimmy was wise enough to hurry along as fast as his bleeding foot would take him. He saw the advantage of a motion to adjourn without further debate, and the motion prevailed. An irregular circumference that touched his ears and his chin and his hair . An hour later, Jimmy Sears had washed the dirt from the interior of an irregular circumference that touched his ears and his chin and his hair. Until the twilight fell he stayed in the conning-tower in the Penningtons' barn, and watched his home through a crack between two boards. When he saw his father leave the house for town after supper, Jimmy hurried down a lane in sight of his father, yet out of his father's reach. At the close of twilight, Jimmy Sears came up the hard-beaten path that led to his home, through burdock weeds and sunflowers. There was a light in the kitchen, and through the window he could see Mrs. Jones moving about. He observed that the supper dishes were being put away. He saw his eldest sister, with the tea towel in her hands, chatting happily with Mrs. Jones. The spectacle filled him with rage. He felt that the other children had deserted him, and that, in the war against the new baby, they had left him to fight unaided. He met a little brother, who greeted him with,— "Uh-hu, Mr. Jimmy, you just wait till pa gets you!" A prolonged and scornful "Aw!" was Jimmy's reply to this welcome. On the step of the back porch, his favorite little sister sat playing with the house-cat. She toddled to Jimmy; he let her take his finger, and they went into the kitchen. "Oh, Jimmy!—where—you—been?" demanded the eldest sister. "Mamma's been asking for you all day. I'd be ashamed if I was you." The boy did not deign to speak to Mrs. Jones, and kept his back to her when he could. He did not answer his sister's question. " Got anything here fit to eat ?" "Got anything here fit to eat?" he asked, as he threw open the cupboard doors. The insult to Mrs. Jones was not accidental. Jimmy supposed that she had cooked the supper. He put two or three plates of food on the table, and drew up a chair, sneering bumptiously, "What's this?" as he dived into each dish. His sister's "Why, Jimmy!" and her warning frowns did not change his course. Mrs. Jones went to the front of the house, diplomatically leaving all the doors open behind her, that Mrs. Sears might hear her son's voice. In a moment the boy caught the faint sound of his mother calling from the distant bedroom, "Jimmy, Jimmy, come here; I want you." The boy pretended not to hear. She called his name again. "Yes 'm," he answered. When she repeated her request, he filled his mouth with pie, and replied, "I'm a-eatin' now." He slipped a piece of ice down the back of his adoring little sister's dress, who sat near him. When she wept noisily, he laughed under his breath, and spoke aloud to his sister at the dish-pan,— "What'd you want to take Annie's doll away from her for? Give it back, why don't you?" " What'd you want to take Annie's doll away from her for ?" "Why—Jimmy—Sears!" retorted the girl. Then lifting her voice, "Mamma, Jimmy's put ice down—" But the lad pressed the ice against the child's back, pretending to be removing the source of the trouble, and the child's lusty howls drowned the girl's protest. When he heard the bedroom door close to shield his mother from the turmoil, Jimmy knew that he had outwitted Mrs. Jones, so he quelled the disturbance he had caused. When Mrs. Jones returned to the kitchen, the boy was sitting on the porch steps with his little sister, telling her about "raw head and bloody bones," greatly to the child's horror and delight. Jimmy heard his elder sister inquire, "Did Mamma eat her supper?" He heard Mrs. Jones respond, "Not very much of it; but she will after a while, I guess. She said to leave it in there." "Couldn't she eat any of that nice chicken Mrs. Pennington sent?" "No, nor Mrs. Carpenter's lemon jelly." "Poor mamma!" sighed the girl. But Jimmy had other reflections. Two minutes later he walked past his mother's open door, and fumbled around in the sitting-room. "Is that you, Jimmy?" asked his mother. "Yes 'm," rejoined the boy. "What are you doing?" "Lookin' for my other coat." "Won't you come in and see me, Jimmy? I haven't seen you for two whole days." "In a minute," returned Jimmy. Standing awkwardly in the doorway, he asked, "What 'd you want?" She drew him down and kissed his cheek while he pecked at her lips . "Come over here, Jimmy," returned the mother. "My poor, neglected boy!" He would not let his eyes find the new baby. He stood stiffly on one foot, and gave his mother his hand. She drew him down and kissed his cheek, while he pecked at her lips. As Jimmy rose, his mother smiled. "Are you hungry, Jimmy?" The boy nodded a vociferous affirmative. Being a boy, one of the lowest orders of human creatures in point of intuitions, Jimmy could not know that his mother understood the rankle in her son's heart. Nor could he divine that she kept the supper dainties as peace offerings. "Won't you have some of my supper?" "Don't you want it?" returned the boy, to justify his greed. "No, Jimmy; I'm not hungry. I kept it all for you." While her son was sitting on the floor, eating off the tray on the chair by the bed, his mother's hand was in his hair, stroking it lovingly. His sister and the other children looked in and saw him. Jimmy knew they were whispering "Hoggy!" but he did not heed them. His mother avoided mentioning the new baby to him; she made him tell her about his sore toe, and in return she told him how lonely she had been without him. As his stomach filled, his heart overflowed,—a common coincidence even with older and better boys than Jimmy, and the tears came to his eyes. At last, when the plate was cleared, he rose, and went to the place where the new-comer lay. He bent over the little puff in the bedclothes, and grinned sheepishly as he lifted the cover from the sleeping baby's face. He looked at the red features a moment curiously, and said in his loud, husky, boyish voice,— "Hullo there, Miss Sears; how are you this evenin'?" Then he pinched his mother's arm and walked out of the room, his soul at peace. MUCH POMP AND SEVERAL CIRCUMSTANCES Back of Pennington's barn, which was the royal castle of the Court of Boyville, ran a hollow. In the hollow grew a gnarly box-elder tree. This tree was the courtiers' hunting-lodge. In the crotches of the rugged branches Piggy Pennington, Abe Carpenter, Jimmy Sears, Bud Perkins, and Mealy Jones were wont to rest of a summer afternoon, recounting the morning's adventures in the royal tourney of the marble-ring, planning for the morrow's chase, meditating upon the evil approach of the fall school term, and following such sedentary pursuits as to any member of the court seemed right and proper. One afternoon late in August the tree was alive with its arboreal aristocracy. Abe Carpenter sat on the lowest branch, plaiting a four-strand, square-braided "quirt"; Jimmy Sears was holding the ends. Piggy was casually skinning cats, hanging by his legs, or chinning on an almost horizontal limb, as he took his part in the lagging talk. Hidden by the foliage in the thick of the tree, in a three-pronged seat, Bud Perkins reclined, his features drawn into a painful grimace, as his right hand passed to and fro before his mouth, rhythmically twanging the tongue of a Jew's-harp, upon which he was playing "To My Sweet Sunny South Take Me Home." He breathed heavily and irregularly. His eyes were on the big white clouds in the blue sky, and his heart was filled with the poetry of lonesomeness that sometimes comes to boys in pensive moods. For the days when he had lived with his father, a nomad of the creeks that flowed by half a score of waterways into the Mississippi, were upon the far horizon of his consciousness, and the memory of those days made him as sad as any memory ever can make a healthy, care-free boy. He played "Dixie," partly because it was his dead father's favorite tune, and partly because, being sprightly, it kept down his melancholy. Later he took out a new mouth-organ, which his foster mother had given to him, and to satisfy his boyish idea of justice played "We shall Meet, but We shall Miss Him," because it was Miss Morgan's favorite. While he played the Jew's-harp his tree friends flung ribald remarks at him. But when Bud began to waver his hand for a tremulo upon the mouth-organ as he played "Marsa's in de Col', Col' Groun'," a peace fell upon the company, and they sat quietly and heard his repertoire,—"Ol' Shadey," "May, Dearest May," "Lilly Dale," "Dey Stole My Chile Away," "Ol' Nicodemus," "Sleeping, I Dream, Love," and "Her Bright Smile." He was a Southern boy—a bird of passage caught in the North—and his music had that sweet, soothing note that cheered the men who fought under the Stars and Bars. Into this scene rushed Mealy Jones, pell mell, hat in hand, breathless, bringing war's alarms. "Fellers, fellers," screamed Mealy, half a block away, "it's a-comin' here! It's goin' to be here in two weeks. The man's puttin' up the boards now, and you can get a job passin' bills." Mommoth Consolidated Shows. An instant later the tree was deserted, and five boys were running as fast as their legs would carry them toward the thick of the town. They stopped at the new pine bill-board, and did not leave the man with the paste bucket until they had seen "Zazell" flying out of the cannon's mouth, the iron-jawed woman performing her marvels, the red-mouthed rhinoceros with the bleeding native impaled upon its horn and the fleeing hunters near by, "the largest elephant in captivity," carrying the ten-thousand dollar beauty, the acrobats whirling through space, James Robinson turning handsprings on his dapple-gray steed, and, last and most ravishing of all, little Willie Sells in pink tights on his three charging Shetland ponies, whose breakneck course in the picture followed one whichever way he turned. When these glories had been pasted upon the wall and had been discussed to the point of cynicism, the Court of Boyville reluctantly adjourned to get in the night wood and dream of a wilderness of monkeys. Piggy Pennington ... galloped his father's fat delivery horse up and down the alley . Oil made by hanging a bottle of angle-worms in the sun to fry . During the two weeks after the appearance of the glad tidings on the bill-boards, the boys of Willow Creek spent many hours in strange habiliments, making grotesque imitations of the spectacles upon the boards. Piggy Pennington rolled his trousers far above his knees for tights, and galloped his father's fat delivery horse up and down the alley, riding sideways, standing, and backwards, with much vainglory. To simulate the motley of the tight-rope-walking clown, Jimmy Sears wore the calico lining of his clothes outside, when he was in the royal castle beyond his mother's ken. Mealy donned carpet slippers in Pennington's barn, and wore long pink-and-white striped stockings of a suspiciously feminine appearance, fastened to his abbreviated shirt waist with stocking-suspenders, hated of all boys. Abe Carpenter, in a bathing-trunk, did shudder-breeding trapeze tricks, and Bud Perkins, who nightly rubbed himself limber in oil made by hanging a bottle of angle-worms in the sun to fry, wore his red calico base-ball clothes, and went through keg-hoops in a dozen different ways. In the streets of the town the youngsters appeared disguised as ordinary boys. They revelled in the pictured visions of the circus, but were sceptical about the literal fulfilment of some of the promises made on the bills. Certain things advertised were eliminated from reasonable expectation: for instance, the boys all knew that the giraffe would not be discovered eating off the top of a cocoanut-tree; nor would the monkeys play a brass band; and they knew that they would not see the "Human Fly" walk on the ceiling at the "concert." For no boy has ever saved enough money to buy a ticket to the "concert." Nevertheless, they gloated over the pictures of the herd of giraffes and the monkey-band and the graceful "Human Fly" walking upside down "defying the laws of gravitation;" and they considered no future, however pleasant, after the day and date on the bills. Thus the golden day approached, looming larger and larger upon the horizon as it came. In the interim, how many a druggist bought his own bottles the third and fourth time, how many a junk-dealer paid for his own iron, how many bags of carpet rags went to the ragman, the world will never know. How many bags of carpet rags went to the ragman ? Now, among children of a larger growth, in festive times hostile demonstrations cease; animosities are buried; but in Boyville a North-ender is a North-ender, a South-ender is a South-ender, and a meeting of the two is a fight. Boyville knows no times of truce. It asks nor offers quarter. When warring clans come together, be it workday, holiday, or even circus day, there is a clatter of clods, a patter of feet, and retreating hoots of defiance. And because the circus bill-boards were frequented by boys of all kiths and clans, clashes occurred frequently, and Bud Perkins, who was the fighter of the South End, had many a call to arms. Indeed, the approaching circus unloosed the dogs of war rather than nestled the dove of peace. For Bud Perkins, in a moment of pride, issued an ukase which forbade all North End boys to look at a certain bill-board near his home. This ukase and his strict enforcement of it made him the target of North End wrath. Little Miss Morgan, his foster-mother, who had adopted him at the death of his father the summer before the circus bills were posted, could not understand how the lad managed to lose so many buttons, nor how he kept tearing his clothes. She ascribed these things to his antecedents and to his deficient training. She did not know that Bud, whom she called Henry, and whose music on the mouth-organ seemed to come from a shy and gentle soul, was the Terror of the South End. Her guileless mind held no place for the important fact that North End boys generally travelled by her door in pairs for safety. Such is the blindness of women. Cupid probably got his defective vision from his mother's side of the house. The last half of the last week before circus day seemed a century to Bud and his friends. Friday and Saturday crept by, and Mealy Jones was the only boy at Sunday-school who knew the Golden Text, for an inflammatory rumor that the circus was unloading from the side-track at the depot swept over the boys' side of the Sunday-school room, and consumed all knowledge of the fifth chapter of Acts, the day's lesson. After Sunday-school the boys broke for the circus grounds. There they feasted their gluttonous eyes upon the canvas-covered chariots, and the elephants, and the camels, and the spotted ponies, passing from the cars to the tents. The unfamiliar noises, the sight of the rising "sea of canvas," the touch of mysterious wagons containing so many wonders, and the intoxicating smell that comes only with much canvas, many animals, and the unpacking of Pandora's box, stuffed the boys' senses until they viewed with utter stoicism the passing dinner hour and the prospect of finding only cold mashed potatoes and the necks and backs of chickens in the cupboards. They even affected indifference to parental scoldings, and lingered about the enchanting spot until the shadows fell eastward and the day was old. Brother Baker—a tiptoeing Nemesis . When a boy gets on his good behavior he tempts Providence. And the Providence of boys is frail and prone to yield. So when Bud Perkins, who was burning with a desire to please Miss Morgan the day before the circus, went to church that Sunday night, any one can see that he was provoking Providence in an unusual and cruel manner. Bud did not sit with Miss Morgan, but lounged into the church, and took a back seat. Three North End boys came in and sat on the same bench. Then Jimmy Sears shuffled past the North Enders, and sat beside Bud. After which the inevitable happened. It kept happening. They "passed it on," and passed it back again; first a pinch, then a chug, then a cuff, then a kick under the bench. Heads craned toward the boys occasionally, and there came an awful moment when Bud Perkins found himself looking brazenly into the eyes of the preacher, who had paused to glare at the boys in the midst of his sermon. The faces of the entire congregation seemed to turn upon Bud automatically. A cherub-like expression of conscious innocence and impenetrable unconcern beamed through Bud Perkins's features. The same expression rested upon the countenances of the four other malefactors. At the end of the third second Jimmy Sears put his hand to his mouth and snorted between his fingers. And four young men looked down their noses. In the hush, Brother Baker—a tiptoeing Nemesis—stalked the full length of the church toward the culprits. When he took his seat beside the boys the preacher continued his discourse. Brother Baker's unctuousness angered Bud Perkins. He felt the implication that his conduct was bad, and his sense of guilt spurred his temper. Satan put a pin in Bud's hand. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Satan moved the boy's arm on the back of the pew, around Jimmy Sears. Then an imp pushed Bud's hand as he jabbed the pin into the back of a North Ender. The boy from the North End let out a yowl of pain. Bud was not quick enough. Brother Baker saw the pin; two hundred devout Methodists saw him clamp his fingers on Bud Perkins's ear, and march him down the length of the church and set him beside Miss Morgan. It was a sickening moment. The North End grinned as one boy under its skin, and was exceeding glad. So agonizing was it for Bud that he forgot to imagine what a triumph it was for the North End—and further anguish is impossible for a boy. Miss Morgan and Bud Perkins left the church with the congregation. Bud dreaded the moment when they would leave the crowd and turn into their side street. When they did turn, Bud was lagging a step or two behind. A boy's troubles are always the fault of the other boy. The North End boy's responsibility in the matter was so clear—to Bud—that, when he went to justify himself to Miss Morgan, he was surprised and hurt at what he considered her feminine blindness to the fact. After she had passed her sentence she asked: "Do you really think you deserve to go, Henry?" The blow stunned the boy. He saw the visions of two weeks burst like bubbles, and he whimpered: "I dunno." But in his heart he did know that to deny a boy the joy of seeing Willie Sells on his three Shetland ponies, for nothing in the world but showing a North-ender his place, was a piece of injustice of the kind for which men and nations go to war. At breakfast Bud kept his eyes on his plate. His face wore the resigned look of a martyr. Miss Morgan was studiously gracious. He dropped leaden monosyllables into the cheery flow of her conversation, and after breakfast put in his time at the woodshed. The Balloon-Vender wormed his way through the buzzing crowd, leaving his wares in a red and blue trail behind him . Dressed-up children were flitting along the side streets, hurrying their seniors . At eight o'clock that morning the town of Willow Creek was in the thrall of the circus. Country wagons were passing on every side street. Delivery carts were rattling about with unusual alacrity. By half-past nine dressed-up children were flitting along the side streets hurrying their seniors. On the main thoroughfare flags were flying, and the streams of strangers that had been flowing into town were eddying at the street corners. The balloon-vender wormed his way through the buzzing crowd, leaving his wares in a red and blue trail behind him. The bark of the fakir rasped the tightening nerves of the town. Everywhere was hubbub; everywhere was the dusty, heated air of the festival; everywhere were men and women ready for the marvel that had come out of the great world, bringing pomp and circumstance in its gilded train; everywhere in Willow Creek the spirit which put the blue sash about the country girl's waist and the flag in her beau's hat ran riot, save at the home of Miss Morgan. There the bees hummed lazily over the old-fashioned flower garden; there the cantankerous jays jabbered in the cottonwoods; there the muffled noises of the town festival came as from afar; there Miss Morgan puttered about her morning's work, trying vainly to croon a gospel hymn; and there Bud Perkins, prone upon the sitting-room sofa, made parallelograms and squares and diamonds with the dots and lines on the ceiling paper. When the throb of the drum and the blare of the brass had set the heart of the town to dancing, some wave of the ecstasy seeped through the lilac bushes and into the quiet house. The boy on the sofa started up suddenly, checked himself ostentatiously, walked to the bird cage, and began to play with the canary. The wave carried the little spinster to the window. The circus had a homestead in human hearts before John Wesley staked his claim, and even so good a Methodist as Miss Morgan could not be deaf to the scream of the calliope nor the tinkle of cymbals. The Blue Sash about the country girl's waist and the flag in her Beau's hat . To emphasize his desolation, Bud left the room, and sat down by a tree in the yard, with his back to the kitchen door and window. There Miss Morgan saw him playing mumble-peg in a desultory fashion. When the courtiers of Boyville came home from the parade they found him; and because he sat playing a silent, sullen, solitary game, and responded to their banter only with melancholy grunts, they knew that the worst had befallen him. Much confab followed, in which the pronoun "she" and "her" were spoken. Otherwise Miss Morgan was unidentified. For the conversation ran thus, over and over:— "You ask her." "Naw, I've done ast 'er." "'T won't do no good for me to ast 'er. She don't like me." "I ain't 'fraid to ast 'er." "Well, then, why don't you?" "Why don't you ?" "Let's all ast 'er." "S'pose she will, Bud?" "I dunno." Then Piggy and Abe and Jimmy and Mealy came trapesing up to Miss Morgan's kitchen door. Bud sat by the tree twirling his knife at his game. Piggy, being the spokesman, stood in the doorway. "Miss Morgan," he said, as he slapped his leg with his hat. "Well, Winfield?" replied the little woman, divining his mission, and hardening her heart against his purpose. "Miss Morgan," he repeated, and then coaxed sheepishly, "can't Bud go to the show with us, Miss Morgan?" "I'm afraid not to-day," smiled back Miss Morgan, as she went about her work. A whisper from the doorstep prompted Piggy to "ask her why;" whereat Piggy echoed: "Why can't he, Miss Morgan?" " One's a trick elephant. You'd die a-laughing if you saw him ." "Henry misbehaved in church last night, and we've agreed that he shall stay home from the circus." Piggy advanced a step or two inside the door, laughing diplomatically: "O—no, Miss Morgan; don't you think he's agreed. He's just dyin' to go." Miss Morgan smiled, but did not join in Piggy's hilarity—a bad sign. Piggy tried again: "They got six elephants, and one's a trick elephant. You'd die a-laughin' if you saw him." And Piggy went into a spasm of laughter. But it left Miss Morgan high and dry upon the island of her determination. Piggy prepared for an heroic measure, and stepped over to the kitchen table, leaning upon it as he pleaded: "This is the last circus this year, Miss Morgan, and it's an awful good one. Can't he go just this once?" " It's an awful good one. Can't he go just this once ?" The debate lasted ten minutes, and at the end four boys walked slowly, with much manifestation of feeling, back to the tree where the fifth sat. There was woe and lamentation after the manner of boy-kind. When the boys left the yard it seemed to Miss Morgan that she could not look from her work without seeing the lonesome figure of Bud. In the afternoon the patter of feet by her house grew slower, and then ceased. Occasionally a belated wayfarer sped by. The music of the circus band outside of the tent came to Miss Morgan's ears on gusts of wind, and died away as the wind ebbed. She dropped the dish-cloth three times in five minutes, and washed her cup and saucer twice. She struggled bravely in the Slough of Despond for awhile, and then turned back with Pliable. "Henry," she said, as the boy walked past her carrying peppergrass to the bird, "Henry, what made you act so last night?" The boy dropped his head and answered: "I dunno." "But, Henry, didn't you know it was wrong?" "I dunno." "Why did you stick that little boy with the pin?" "Well—well—" he gasped, preparing for a defence. "Well—he pinched me first." "Yes, Henry, but don't you know that it's wrong to do those things in church? Don't you see how bad it was?" "I was just a-playin', Miss Morgan; I didn't mean to." Bud did not dare to trust his instinctive reading of the signs. He went on impulsively: "I wanted him to quit, but he just kept right on, and Brother Baker didn't touch him." The wind brought the staccato music of the circus band to the foster-mother's ears. The music completed her moral decay, for she was thinking, if Brother Baker would only look after his own children as carefully as he looked after those of other people, the world would be better. Then she said: "Now, Henry, if I let you go, just this once—now just this once, mind you—will you promise never to do anything like that again?" Blackness dropped from the boy's spirit, and by main strength he strangled a desire to yell. The desire revived when he reached the alley, and he ran whooping to the circus grounds.

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