the two had journeyed in company from the courthouse. Having,
with the aid of the paying teller, instructed O'Day in the technical
details requisite to the drawing of personal checks, Judge Priest went
home and had his bag packed, and left for Reelfoot Lake to spend a week
fishing. As a consequence he missed the remaining two events, following
immediately thereafter.

The circus was no great shakes of a circus; no grand, glittering,
gorgeous, glorious pageant of education and entertainment, travelling
on its own special trains; no vast tented city of world's wonders and
world's champions, heralded for weeks and weeks in advance of its coming
by dead walls emblazoned with the finest examples of the lithographer's
art, and by half-page advertisements in the _Daily Evening News_. On the
contrary, it was a shabby little wagon show, which, coming overland on
short notice, rolled into town under horse power, and set up its ragged
and dusty canvases on the vacant lot across from Yeiser's drug store.

Compared with the street parade of any of its great and famous rivals,
the street parade of this circus was a meagre and disappointing thing.
Why, there was only one elephant, a dwarfish and debilitated-looking
creature, worn mangy and slick on its various angles, like the cover of
an old-fashioned haircloth trunk; and obviously most of the closed cages
were weather-beaten stake wagons in disguise. Nevertheless, there was a
sizable turnout of people for the afternoon performance. After all, a
circus was a circus.

Moreover, this particular circus was marked at the afternoon performance
by happenings of a nature most decidedly unusual. At one o'clock the
doors were opened: at one-ten the eyes of the proprietor were made glad
and his heart was uplifted within him by the sight of a strange
procession, drawing nearer and nearer across the scuffed turf of the
common, and heading in the direction of the red ticket wagon.

At the head of the procession marched Peep O'Day--only, of course, the
proprietor didn't know it was Peep O'Day--a queer figure in his rumpled
black clothes and his red-topped brass-toed boots, and with one hand
holding fast to the string of a captive toy balloon. Behind him, in an
uneven jostling formation, followed many small boys and some small
girls. A census of the ranks would have developed that here were
included practically all the juvenile white population who otherwise,
through a lack of funds, would have