y wife and babe! Restored to me after all these years!
The heavens be thanked!"

Well, 'twas a sacred sort of time. The town folks tiptoed away, the men
looking solemn but glad, and the women swabbing their deadlights and
saying how affecting 'twas, and so on. Oh, you could see that show would
do business THAT night, if it never did afore.

The manager got after Jonadab and me later on, and did his best to pump
us, but he didn't find out much. He told us that Montague belonged to
the Uncle Tom's Cabin Company, and that he'd disappeared a fortni't or
so afore, when they were playing at Hyannis. Eva was his wife, and the
child was their little boy. The bloodhounds knew him, and that's why
they chased him so.

"What was you two yelling 'Stop thief!' after him for?" says he. "Has he
stole anything?"

We says "No."

"Then what did you want to get him for?" he says.

"We didn't," says Jonadab. "We wanted to get rid of him. We don't want
to see him no more."

You could tell that the manager was puzzled, but he laughed.

"All right," says he. "If I know anything about Maggie--that's Mrs.
Schmults--he won't get loose ag'in."

We only saw Montague to talk to but once that day. Then he peeked out
from under the winder shade at the hotel and asked us if we'd told
anybody where he'd been. When he found we hadn't, he was thankful.

"You tell Petey," says he, "that he's won the whole pot, kitty and all.
I don't think I'll visit him again, nor Belle, neither."

"I wouldn't," says I. "They might write to Maudina that you was a
married man. And old Stumpton's been praying for something alive to
shoot at," I says.

The manager gave Jonadab and me a couple of tickets, and we went to the
show that night. And when we saw Booth Hank Montague parading about the
stage and defying the slave hunters, and telling 'em he was a free man,
standing on the Lord's free soil, and so on, we realized 'twould have
been a crime to let him do anything else.

"As an imitation poet," says Jonadab, "he was a kind of mildewed
article, but as a play actor--well, there may be some that can beat him,
but _I_ never see 'em!"

THE MARE AND THE MOTOR

Them Todds had got on my nerves. 'Twas Peter's ad that brought 'em down.
You see, 'twas 'long toward the end of the season at the Old Home, and
Brown had been advertising in the New York and Boston papers to "bag
the leftovers," as he called it. Besides the reg'lar hogwash about the
"breath o